Last year Apple launched a new setting on its iPhones designed to tackle the problem of motion sickness, which affects roughly half of people and still baffles scientists
A new iPhone setting could help banish your motion sickness — if you turn it on.
Roughly 50 per cent of adults suffer from nausea when travelling by plane, train or car. The problem is particularly acute for many when looking at a screen or book while on the move, making journeys extra tedious.
Experts aren’t entirely certain why some people suffer from motion sickness and others don’t or why it happens at all. The broad theory is that the body is aware of its position in space thanks to sensory information coming from sources like vision, the vestibular system (which gauges balance), and the proprioceptive system (which handles body awareness).
When not moving, they all match up. When moving, there is a discrepancy between what you see and what you feel, and it is this that is understood to be the basis of motion sickness.
Last year Apple launched a new setting designed to tackle this problem. If you experience discomfort when you use iPhone while riding as a passenger in a car or other on-road vehicle, you can turn on Vehicle Motion Cues — onscreen cues that may help reduce motion sickness.
Vehicle Motion Cues appear as animated dots on the edges of the screen that represent how the vehicle is moving without interfering with what you’re doing on iPhone.
How to switch them on
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Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion.
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Tap Show Vehicle Motion Cues, then tap an option. If you choose Automatic, animated dots appear on the screen when iPhone detects that you’re riding in a car or other on-road vehicle; the dots are hidden when the motion stops.
In 2019, computer scientists at the University of Salzburg in Austria developed and tested an Android app they called Bubble Margin which worked similarly to Apple’s feature. Although just ten people took part in the study, motion sickness levels were significantly lower for people who used the app while reading than those who didn’t
Lauren Mazzo tried the Apple version for Self magazine and had less success. “I’ve got bummer news: The first few times I tried out Vehicle Motion Cues, it didn’t go so well. After about 10 minutes in the back of a taxi, spent entirely looking at my phone, I felt substantially nauseous,” she wrote.
“It’s hard to say if I was less vommy compared to how I’d feel if the feature wasn’t on, but it certainly didn’t prevent motion sickness in my case.”
According to Michael Barnett-Cowan, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences and director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab at the University of Waterloo, that is to be expected.
“Our research and that of many others has shown that there are large individual differences when it comes to motion sickness, as well as large individual differences in the effectiveness of sickness countermeasures. What this means is that Apple’s application might work for some people, not work for other people, and for some people it could even make symptoms worse,” he told Self.
