The back-to-school item nobody thinks about

Your kids are about to sit down for the school year.

Class, then homework, then a screen. A lot of kids are sitting 7 or 8 hours a day, most of it hunched forward over a laptop or a phone.

The problem is our bodies are built to move, not to hold one position for hours.

Hold one slouched, head-forward position for hours and circulation drops while the muscles and connective tissue slowly adapt to that shape.

In a kid that's a bigger deal. Childhood and the teen years are when the spine and movement habits are still forming, so a posture repeated every day can set the pattern for life. 

Poor ergonomics in childhood raises the risk of chronic musculoskeletal problems in adulthood by 70%. Nearly 39% of American adults already report back pain, and a lot of it started at a desk decades earlier.

Humanscale's Managing Ergonomics Consultant wrote a genuinely useful piece on this, Growing Up with Screens. It walks through what to watch for by age and how to set up a space that protects a growing body.

Did you know Cornell and Virginia Tech researchers found that only a small fraction of people know how to operate their own desk chair?

Most can't recline without hunting for a lever, so they don't. They sit locked in one position all day.

Picture that with a kid. You're not going to teach an 11-year-old to work tension dials and tilt locks. They'll sit however the chair leaves them, usually still and slumped.

This is what Humanscale solved.

Humanscale got rid of the springs, levers, and dials entirely and built the chair around one idea: your own body weight moves it. Lean, and it reclines with you. Shift, and it follows. Nothing to learn, nothing to adjust. 

For a kid, that means the chair keeps them moving all day without anyone telling them to.

I've sat in a Freedom Ocean chair in my office for years. I lean, it moves, I never think about it, and I'm not stiff at the end of a long day the way I used to be.

For kids, the one that fits is the Diffrient World. Same movement principle, built for a growing body, and it's the chair Humanscale's ergonomist points parents to.

Then there's what the chair is made of.

You already read ingredient labels on a box before you feed your kids. Furniture typically has no such label. Humanscale puts a Declare label on every product, listing what's inside like  a nutrition label lists ingredients. They were first in the industry to do it. 

For the next 48 hours only, the Food Babe community can save 25% sitewide at Humanscale with code FOODBABE—an offer they almost never run. Ends Tuesday, August 11 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

The Diffrient World for your kids, the Freedom Ocean for your own desk, or anything else that needs replacing. 

Shop Humanscale here →

This is the week everyone's buying backpacks and notebooks. The chair they sit in may be the thing that matters most..

Xo,
Vani

P.S. I highly recommend you read  Growing Up with Screens. Even the free tips in there, screen at eye level, feet flat, move every 30 minutes, will help your kid whether or not you change a single piece of furniture.

P.P.S. At Food Babe, we only promote products we love and use ourselves. If you buy a product we link to, we may earn a commission.

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