5 Health Benefits of Using a Stylus With Your PC, Phone, or Tablet

Using a stylus instead of a keyboard for some tasks can help you adjust your posture, avoid repetitive strain, and stimulate creativity.

A stylus often isn't the default input option on your PC, phone, or tablet. Instead, you poke at icons or virtual keyboards with your fingertips and thumbs. You sit at laptops and desktops hunched over a keyboard and mouse.

But on any device with a touchscreen, you have the option to use a stylus instead. A growing number even come with specialized pens. Picking up a stylus or pen instead of poking with your fingers can come with health benefits that make it worth considering this change to how you tap and write.

Many people work with their hands, just not in the way our ancestors did. People spend more and more of their days with their fingers splayed across a keyboard. Your fingers spend hours bent, rapidly hitting one key after another.

Typing is a fast way to input text, but it's also very repetitive. Using a stylus gives your hands a chance to change how they bend. You use your fingers differently and engage other muscles. For example, if you experience pain in your thumbs while texting, Harvard Medical School recommends using a stylus as a way to relieve pressure on your thumbs.

With text recognition having improved significantly over the years, you now have the option to handwrite text whenever typing is required. Some people may have an easy time handwriting all the time. Those that don't may still find benefit in having the option to switch from typing to handwriting throughout the day.

A keyboard is a tool designed to be used at a desk. Despite the name, using a laptop in your lap isn't at all good for your posture. A standing desk at least gives you the option to stand while you type, so you don't have to spend as many hours sitting.

A stylus opens up more possibilities. It is significantly easier to recline in a comfy chair while handwriting than while typing on a laptop. Lying down while writing still isn't ideal, but it's much easier to do when you only need to use one hand to hold a pen. You can even write with a stylus while walking (but you probably want to pay more attention to where you're going).

This opens up the possibility for you to assume various postures throughout your hours of work or study. Bodies don't like to hold one position for an extended period of time. This gives you the option to be in different positions and move more often. Using a stylus can work well alongside other steps you take to improve your posture while working from home.

A discussion of posture tends to focus on your back and neck. But a healthy alignment involves more parts of your body. Consider your arms, which, when bunched up, put added pressure on your neck and shoulders.

Using a pen to write on a tablet like you would on a piece of paper allows you the option to hold your arm in a position that's comfortable regardless of the height of the surface you're writing on. You don't need to adjust the height of your chair or your table to get your arm at an angle that puts less tension on the rest of your body. The same is true when lying down.

If you share devices with others, you may have noticed how dirty electronics can get. Crumbs and dust get in keyboards. Smudges accumulate all over screens, serving as visible indicators of invisible germs that may also have come in contact with the surface.

Using a stylus can reduce your contact with such germs. Holding a pen keeps your hand at more of a distance from the screen. You also have the option to wear gloves, saving you from making contact with any part of the device.

To be clear, touching a device probably isn't going to be the way you come down with an infection. But at the same time, those with young kids know how prone they are to sneezing directly at a screen, wiping their nose with their hand, and then proceeding to continue using the device. Perhaps even worse, a London Metropolitan University study shows that public touchscreens at restaurants can actually carry traces of feces.

This can all be reason enough to carry around a stylus to use with your smartphone.

Have you noticed a difference in how much information you retain when you take notes by hand compared to typing them on a laptop? Part of this has to do with the abundance of distractions available on a PC. It can be difficult not to check your email or browse your favorite site in the middle of a lecture. But part of this has to do with the act of handwriting itself.

Handwriting is a creative, artistic process. You poke a key to type a character on a keyboard. But with handwriting, you're constantly drawing. A question mark can be barely legible, or it can be a work of art (or both).

Even when you are attempting to depict the same letters, everyone's handwriting is different. The way you hold the pen, the size of your loops, and the space between your characters are all the result of your brain, hands, and arms working together. The act is more physically or cognitively stimulating than typing, so there's more to recall.

This dynamic has been well-documented over the years. A 2020 study in Frontiers in Psychology showed how cursive handwriting is better than typing for learning in the classroom for both kids and young adults. So if you're ready to give it a go, consider picking up up one of the best styluses for taking notes by hand.

When looking at a pen, personal health probably isn't something that quickly jumps to mind. You might consider whether you enjoy handwriting notes or whether you're an artist who needs to create digital illustrations, but health?

Yet due to the physical characteristics of handwriting, there are simple ways picking up a stylus can benefit your well-being. Give it a try and see if you can feel the difference.

Bertel is a digital minimalist who works from an e-ink Android tablet and carries a Light Phone II. Having covered Linux and Android-based devices since 2013, he delights in helping others decide which tech to bring into their lives... and which tech to do without.