Bill DanielsOwner/trainer, Beyond Fitness online · Personal Trainer & Pain Science Expert Helping People Move Without Fear

Why Screens Ruin Your Neck (It’s Not What You Think) #Shorts

11 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this short video, Bill from Beyond Fitness Online explains how prolonged screen use dramatically lowers blink rate—down to roughly one‑third of normal—causing eye strain and fatigue of the ocular muscles. He connects this ocular fatigue to neck pain, noting that strained eye muscles can affect posture and tension in the neck. Bill then introduces a quick, practical exercise designed to give the eyes a brief rest and alleviate the associated neck discomfort, emphasizing that only a short pause is needed to counteract the effects.

Chapters

Hi, I'm Bill from Beyond Fitness Online, and today we're going to talk about eye strain and how that affects not just your vision but also your neck pain. Studies have shown that when we are on a screen for extended periods of time, that our blink rate reduces significantly. Now, depending on what study you read, the numbers are a little bit different, but you can assume that you're blinking at about a third of the rate that you normally would be when you're looking at a screen. So what that leads to is eye strain, because if the eyes are not blinking, they are straining harder. The vision is going to suffer because the eyes are fatiguing and the muscles around the eyes. So we need to give them a chance to rest, and it doesn't take a lot. What I'm going to show you today is an exercise to help with that.