Properly position your monitors to avoid repetitive injuries

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hi, I’m Danielle Vernon, your back PT ergonomist. I’m here to talk to you today about modern placement with single and multiple monitors. Most people don’t usually reach out to me to talk to me about monitor placement, but they do come and ask me how to help fix them with their neck pain. So let’s dive in when you have single and double monitors, there are certain things that you want to think that the first thing you want to think that is definitely setting up your chair. You want to make sure that you’re at a height where if you’ve got your chair pulled up to your desk, that you can have your arms at 90 degrees. So you’ve got a pull-out tray. Your chair’s going to be lower with this chair. This desk matches my height because I can sit up to it and type with my arms at 90 degrees.

Speaker 1: (00:46)
And now I can set the monitors. So when you have a single monitor, you want to make sure that your head is balanced over your shoulders. Which means that usually the top one third of that screen is where you want your eyes to be drawn into. If it’s too high, you’re going to have neck extension. You’re going to start to get some pain back here in your neck. If it’s too low, it’s going to draw your body down. And it’s going to create a forward head posture and start creating pain in your low back as well. So keep in mind that your head weighs as much as a bowling ball. So for every inch that your head is for, with your shoulders, it puts a ton of stress on your neck. And so you want to bring those, those shoulders and head back into alignment. The other thing is you’ve got to keep in mind that if you’re doing different tasks on the screen, you might consider that you want to have a different placement normally for day-to-day activity or doing computer work.

Speaker 1: (01:44)
Top one third screen is pretty natural. If you’re doing more emails, um, or reports, maybe you want to put your focus on that middle one for the screen now for data entry for people that are constantly doing data entry, their vision is going to usually be at the bottom of the screen. So for that, you would want to have your eyeline being directed in the bottom one third of the screen. The other thing to take into consideration is if you’re a touch typist, you can sit up with good posture and you’re not looking down at a keyboard. So that monitor placement is going to be right in line with where you are. Whereas if you’re a, um, touch and peck kind of typist where you’re constantly having to look up, you might consider lowering it a little bit so that you’re not having to do a massive flection and extension movement with the neck, which is going to create repetitive stress in a different way.

Speaker 1: (02:42)
Now that’s for one monitor. So when we have more than one monitor, we consider an 80 20 rule, whatever monitor you’re spending the most time on should be the monitor that’s in front of you. So as you can see here, I’ve got two monitors, but this monitor is just for overflow. And this is one that I’m only looking at about 20% of the time. So it’s okay that it can be off to the side, but if you’re working on two monitors equally, then it’s best to make sure that you’re moving your monitors over so that when you’re working, these monitors are not only at the same height, but that your midline site goes right between them just like the spine of a book so that you can equally make sure that you are looking to the left to the right, no big movements and no big up and down sways. And that way you can balance the rotation of your neck, between the two monitors without any excessive movements. So if you have anymore questions or say, if you’re using three monitors and you want additional information, feel free to check out our link at the website below, and I’d be happy to help you. Thanks.