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text message injury (tekst MES.ij in.juh.ree) n. A form of repetitive stress injury caused by excessive use of the thumb to type text messages into a mobile phone. Also: TMI.

Example Citation:
Last year, Andrew Chadwick, director of the British RSI Association, suggested that children obsessed with text messaging could be at risk from TMItext message injury — a painful swelling and inflammation of the fingers and thumbs.
—Nigel Powell, "When text messaging can be bad for your health," The Times (London), April 9, 2002

Earliest Citation:
The craze for text messaging could create an RSI epidemic, a charity has warned. The rapid movements used to send text from a mobile phone can cause a new form of repetitive strain injury dubbed TMI.

The RSI Association believes text message injury could afflict huge numbers of people as the texting craze grows.

Director Andrew Chadwick said: "We're talking about people making hundreds of tiny repeated movements as they use the keypad.

"That's almost a prefect recipe for causing RSI."
—"Texting is bad 4u," The Mirror, April 4, 2001

Notes:
Word Spy subscriber Ravi Subramanian has suggested that another name for this type of medical condition ought to be "repetitive press injury." Thumbs up!

Related Words:
BlackBerry thumb
mouse wrist
Nintendo thumb
phone neck
RDI
smexting
text
thumb culture
thumbable
thumboard

Subject Category:
Technology - Cell Phones

Posted on May 30, 2001
Updated on July 11, 2002


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