All the Ways Our Everyday Gadgets Hurt Us Last Year

A man wearing a virtual reality headset in a restaurant hits his 6-year-old son with a controller, sending him to the hospital with a cut eyebrow. A 21-year-old sitting on a plane is hit in the head by a laptop falling from an overhead bin. A 39-year-old has the rubber tip of an earbud stuck in his ear and tries unsuccessfully to remove it with a screwdriver. And many, many people fall off hoverboards.

While gadgets and devices can bring joy to our lives, they also cause thousands of serious injuries each year. To determine the safety implications of the devices we often review, Gizmodo analyzed technology-related injuries that led to emergency room visits in 2023 using data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). The database tracks emergency room visits in a representative sample of hospitals and documents their association with a wide range of consumer products.

We analyzed emergency department visits from a database in which patients attributed their injuries to several popular consumer technologies: cell phones, drones, headsets, headphones, hoverboards, tablets, vibrators, video games, and virtual reality headsets. While NEISS uses its sample data to calculate national estimates of hospitalizations caused by consumer products, our analysis of more specific product categories offers a less robust and more anecdotal picture of how our favorite technologies are harming us.

Video games

A not-so-scientific analysis by Gizmodo shows that people playing normal video games tend to hit inanimate objects on purpose, while people playing virtual reality video games tend to hit others accidentally.

NEISS data documents that VR gamers are unintentionally hitting their mothers, their children, and in the case of one unlucky 12-year-old, hitting themselves in the penis. More than 64 percent of VR-related emergency room visits were the result of unintentional hitting.

Meanwhile, furious boxers who threw themselves with rage accounted for 5 percent of injuries related to video games that weren’t explicitly labeled as VR. They were notable for their poor choice of punching surfaces, such as windows, mirrors, and glass tables.

A quarter of ER visits related to non-VR video games were the result of seizures or blackouts, while 13 percent were for complaints like carpal tunnel syndrome, neck pain, and vision problems that patients attributed to long gaming sessions and repetitive movements. Interestingly, these serious conditions were completely absent from ER visits related to VR, which were all attributed to gamers hitting things, bumping into things, falling, or developing wounds from wearing headsets.

Hoverboards vs. Drones

Hoverboards accounted for more emergency room visits in the NEISS trial than any other device we studied. People were bumping into every possible piece of furniture and falling on every body part that could be landed on, especially wrists and heads (please wear a helmet while hovering). The good news is that the 2023 data did not include any examples of hoverboards spontaneously combusting.

Surprisingly, in our data, drones were responsible for the fewest emergency room visits, a suspiciously low number of incidents – just 9.

Headphones

As if on-ear headphone lovers needed another reason to feel smug about their audiophilia, they appear to be far less likely to suffer injury from their devices than earphone wearers. More than 70 percent of headphone-related emergency room visits were the result of plastic and rubber earphone tips getting stuck in patients’ ears. The data suggests that it’s unwise to fall asleep with your earphones on or shove other objects into your ear to dislodge a stuck earphone tip.

While a cable attached to the earpiece may make it easier to remove, it also comes with risks. One 44-year-old patient burned her hands when her earpieces got caught on something while she was carrying a pot of boiling water.

Vibrators

It’s no secret that people have vibrators stuck in their bodies. But not as often as earbuds, according to a sample of NEISS data.

Mobile phones

The most dangerous thing to do with a cell phone seems to be holding it — followed by not holding it. More than 13 percent of cell phone-related emergency room visits in the 2023 database were the result of dropping the phone on one’s face, toes, or children

About 12 percent of injuries were the result of distracted riders falling off their bikes, hitting potholes, and in one case, running into a metal 9/11 memorial plaque while looking at their phone instead of where they were going. Needless to say, doomscrolling while going down stairs is especially dangerous.

Swiping across a broken phone screen accounted for 7 percent of emergency room visits, while falling out of bed or a chair while reaching for a phone (who hasn’t experienced that?) accounted for 5 percent of visits.

Phone manufacturers bear some responsibility: another 5 percent of phone-related emergency calls resulted from users receiving electric shocks or devices spontaneously igniting and burning out.

And one injury appears to have been an act of God. A 48-year-old woman was sitting on the floor of her home, holding her cellphone during a storm, when a flash of blue lightning struck the phone and ripped it out of her hand, leaving her whole body tingling but thankfully unburned.

Laptops vs. Tablets

When shopping for your next personal computer, one factor you might want to consider is that tablets caused 36 percent fewer emergency room visits than laptops, according to 2023 NEISS data. The comparative weight of laptops seems to account for most of that. More than 34 percent of laptop-related injuries resulted from the computer falling on someone’s head or feet, which is twice the rate of emergency room visits caused by tablets. The larger size of laptops also makes traveling with them less convenient and more dangerous. Five percent of laptop-related injuries resulted from laptops falling out of overhead bins on airplanes or buses.

But lighter things aren’t always safer. They’re easier to throw. NEISS’s data on tablets and mobile phones is full of examples of siblings “accidentally” throwing devices at each other.