It's possible people have "grown into" a keyboard better than the previous generations did.
Further, before the 1990's there was a secretarial pool where managers would send documents to get typed out. Sometime during the 1990's the pool went away and people were expected to type their own documents up. Sure they could create templates now with WordPerfect, say, but the idea is that the keyboard became more and more present in an employees life around that time -- so hence more likely to get carpal tunnel.
It didn't. It just became a routine thing to be diagnosed.
When I had wrist surgery for an accident, every single data entry person at the hospital (almost a dozen of them) knew the surgeon I was going to because they all had their wrists operated on because of ailments from the cheap-ass computer stuff they were using.
You would think that the hospital and insurance provider would see the link and decide that maybe providing better ergonomic conditions would be useful, but ... no. Putting people in for surgery doesn't come off the budget while ergonomic workstations would. So, here we are.
It also doesn't hurt that most tech workers are cognizant of the problem and now happen to be paid well enough that they can do something about it.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/03/the-rise-and-mys...
From 60% to 9%.
That makes me suspect that the total number of RSI cases is much larger right now than from back in 1990. This would back up my assertion that RSI simply became a mainstream medical diagnosis.
And, do note that the data is confounded by being taken during Covid. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr189.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6739a4.htm Generally the rate was lower in the latter years for this study.
Not that I think it’s not a real thing and lots of people don’t get it - but in the 90’s it was definitely a “fad” diagnosis.
Carpel tunnel and RSI also predates computers. Musicians still suffer this sort of injury, generally by forcing themselves to keep playing when it hurts. Poor computer ergonomics just made it popular.