Have you ever felt like you had stopped breathing while reading an email or replying to a work message? Possibly the answer is yes, that is what screen apnea is all about. A phenomenon that was discovered in 2007 by a former Microsoft executive, Linda Stone, when she herself was surprised in this situation. Something that especially surprised her because she used to do breathing exercises every morning. But what exactly is this and why does it happen?
Screen pain represents the body’s response to a stimulus that generates stress, as the nervous system must decipher whether or not it is a threat. And, during this process, the concentration that is dedicated requires such mental effort that it entails specific physiological changes. Among them is the fact that the heart rate decreases and the breathing becomes less deep, or even stops.
Linda Stone conducted a home study with a sample of 200 people to explore this phenomenon that she herself had suffered from. She was in charge of monitoring them while they checked her email, an experiment from which she found that 80% of the participants saw her breathing altered or even held it during the process. She later made her findings public through a publication on The Huffington Post in 2008. Although the name for this phenomenon was initially “email apnea,” it is now known as “screen apnea.”
While screen apnea is not harmful in itself, it could become a problem if it is persistent and repetitive. This is because the nervous system, which causes this reflex, goes into a chronic state in which everything becomes a threat. This situation would affect people’s health, since getting used to shallow breathing would generate greater stress and considerable exhaustion.
People who feel like they are breathing with their mouth open when in front of a screen, with labored or even holding breaths, as well as a slower heart rate, may be experiencing screen apnea. In these cases, there are different measures to avoid it.
