Former tech journalist and current venture capitalist Om Malik is giving up his beloved iPhone 7+ for an iPhone SE. That means switch out a huge, productivity-boosting screen and a cutting edge camera for 2015’s specs in 2013’s form factor.

Why on earth would he do this? Because he has to:

Over past few months, I have been experiencing increasing pain in my left wrist and thumb. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. I thought it was a broken bone or something like that. I mean it was painful and it forced me to visit my doctor According to my doctor is because of overusing my left thumb on the phone. She pointed out it is only a matter of time before this turns into a full-blown case of carpal tunnel syndrome and I will need surgery to fix it. So I have a brace on my left hand and a smaller phone will allow me to do a lot less than the big phone and hopefully I will heal sooner.

Malik wonders, quite rightly, if we’re storing up a carpal tunnel time bomb for ourselves:

As an aside, I wonder how many new age, post touch interface injuries are cropping up because our devices are getting bigger and bigger, more entrenched in our lives. I mean I can’t be alone on this? Aren’t our kids growing up with these devices essentially as an appendage? I wonder if Apple (or Samsung) studied the detrimental impact of mega-sized devices and their addictive nature on average people?

So, here’s another reason digital sucks: because it doesn’t take account of our physical bodies and their actual limits.

Malik has some good suggestions, but they don’t change the fact we’re going through a massive experiment on the impact of dramatically changing the way we use our hands on a  daily basis.