EyeForcer fights against ‘Gameboy Disease’ or ‘Tech Neck’

These eyeglasses punish your children for slouching

I’ve written before about some of the wackier stuff that we get on the Destructoid tip line. Sometimes, we get tips about Kickstarter projects that have concluded successfully. Niero himself brought this one to our attention after seeing it on Facebook, and I have to admit, it’s an interesting idea.

EyeForcer is a set of eyeglasses that don’t have frames in them, and they appear to use a gyroscope to check the angle a child is holding their head at while using a tablet or other handheld device. If the glasses detect that the wearer is slouching or has their head down for more than a second, it pushes a warning to the device, and the parent can decide how many warnings the child gets before the device shuts off entirely. 

If the child tries to take the glasses off to cheat the system, it knows they aren’t wearing it and will still shut down their device. It’s a tech solution for a biological problem, and I can’t bring myself to make as much fun of it as the sex shorts. Still, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a digital replacement for nagging.

The part that brought this to our attention was the description of what could happen without the product — “Game Boy Disease,” or “Tech Neck.” Nintendo hasn’t used the Game Boy moniker since November 2004 when the DS launched, but I suppose it does get the point across. I rather doubt that these glasses would work with an actual Game Boy, though, since the app would be pretty hard to install on 1989 technology. On the other hand, Tech Neck sounds like a minor Venture Brothers villain, or maybe a parody of the He-man character Mekanek.

In all seriousness, it’s laudable that someone is trying to help improve children’s posture this way, and threatening to take away a kid’s video games is one of the more effective non-corporal punishments. Still, there are a few who might see this as counter to their desires.

Eyeforcer [Kickstarter]