In the evening, as you close the laptop, your neck feels stiff. A tightness at the base of the skull, a dull ache between the shoulder blades. Not real pain. Just enough to notice, and regular enough that you have stopped blaming chance.

It is not your imagination. Neck pain is one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints in the world. The World Health Organization estimates that around 222 million people live with it, among the 1.71 billion affected by a musculoskeletal condition. In France, these disorders, known as TMS, account for roughly 90% of recognised occupational diseases, and the national health insurer (Assurance Maladie) reports they rose another 6.7% between 2023 and 2024.

Remote work did not invent the problem, but it moved it. During the pandemic, a large survey of more than four thousand homeworkers found that over two-thirds reported neck or shoulder pain, the neck among the most affected areas. In France, an analysis of the national CONSTANCES cohort found that, since the first lockdown, new neck pain had appeared in 2.1% of men and 4.4% of women; among women, teleworking more than half the time was associated with a higher risk of neck pain. The association was not significant in men, so caution is warranted. The takeaway is a modest one: time spent at a screen at home may matter, though it is not the only factor.

This article will not sell you a chair. It explains why the neck is the weak point of the home-work setup, why the laptop is so much to blame, and what the studies actually say, nuance included, about how to put it right.

01. Why the neck is the weak link

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An adult head weighs several kilograms on its own. As long as it stays balanced over the shoulders, that weight drops straight down through the spine and the neck muscles have almost nothing to do. The moment it tips forward to reach a screen that sits too low, the balance breaks.

Ergonomics has a name for this posture: forward head posture. A systematic review with meta-analysis found that, in adults, it is associated with neck pain: people with neck pain show more of it than those without, and its magnitude correlates with how intense the pain is. This is an association, not proof of cause: it is not always clear whether the posture precedes the pain or follows from it. But in adults the link is consistent.

The mechanics are well understood. The further the neck bends, the greater the leverage the head exerts on the vertebrae, and the harder the neck extensor muscles must pull to hold it up: an experimental study measured that both the gravitational moment and the activity of those muscles rise as the flexion angle increases. An EMG-driven biomechanical model estimates that at 45 degrees of flexion (the angle of a head bent over a flat laptop), compression on the cervical spine is roughly 1.6 times higher, and shear on the upper neck vertebrae about four times higher, than in a neutral posture.

02. Why the laptop, specifically

The laptop is a remarkable object and an ergonomic trap. Its flaw is the same as its virtue: the screen and the keyboard are one piece. You cannot adjust one without throwing off the other. If the keyboard sits at the right height for your hands, the screen is too low for your eyes; if the screen is at the right height, the keyboard is out of reach.

This constraint has been documented for decades. As early as the mid-1990s, studies comparing laptops and desktop computers found significantly greater neck flexion and head tilt on a laptop. More recent motion-capture work puts a number on it: working on a flat laptop adds, on average, about ten degrees of neck flexion compared with a properly positioned desktop screen.

Where you put the machine matters as much as the machine itself. A study by Japan's occupational-health institute measured, with the same laptop, near-neutral neck flexion on a proper table, and around 27 degrees on a sofa. So it is not the laptop alone that wrecks the posture, but the absence of a real work surface. Working from the bed or the sofa, that everyday remote-work habit, is precisely the setup the neck tolerates least.

Even so, simply putting the laptop on the desk does not fix everything: by raising your gaze you relieve the neck but shift some of the load onto the shoulders. No single laptop position is ideal. That is why the most effective correction is not to place the laptop better, but to transform it.

03. The fix that costs almost nothing

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The correction comes down to two gestures. Raise the laptop screen so its top edge reaches eye level or just below. And plug in a separate keyboard and mouse, kept flat on the desk, so the hands stay low while the eyes come up. It is the gap between the two — screen high, hands low — that the laptop alone can never create.

What the studies measure is consistent. In a randomized trial, raising the laptop on a stand (with an external keyboard in every condition) cut self-reported neck discomfort almost in half (from 4.9 to 2.7 on a 10-point scale), whereas the flat laptop scored a posture rating flagged as needing prompt correction. Raising the screen reduces head flexion and the activity of the deep neck muscles, and delays their fatigue. What raising the screen does not do, on its own, is relieve the trapezius and shoulder. That is exactly the point of the separate keyboard that completes the gesture.

This logic matches official guidance. France's INRS (the national institute for occupational health and safety) advises keeping the top of the screen below the horizontal line of sight and an eye-to-screen distance of about 50 to 70 centimetres, roughly an arm's length. It is also what people do on their own when allowed to set their own screen: they place it slightly below eye level, since a screen set too high produces more visual strain. The options for raising it, from a simple riser to an articulated arm, are reviewed in our monitor stand comparison; the rest of the workstation is covered in our home-office ergonomics guide.

04. Moving matters more than sitting up straight

There is a stubborn belief that "good posture" is all it takes to spare your neck. Research tells a slightly different story: the best posture is mostly the one that changes. A perfect position held for three hours straight is tiring too.

It is movement, more than adjustment, that comes out of the intervention studies. In a randomized trial, prompting workers to take active breaks or to shift position regularly cut new neck pain over six months by more than half: 17% of those participants developed it, against 44% in the control group. A caution, though: a recent Cochrane review concludes that simply adding more breaks has a very uncertain effect. What seems to matter is not the number of breaks but what you do with them: stand up, walk, stretch. INRS, for its part, recommends active breaks ideally every 30 minutes, and breaking up the seated posture.

Over the medium term, the best-supported tool is strengthening. A systematic review of 27 randomized trials concludes, with moderate-quality evidence, that neck and shoulder strengthening exercises reduce neck pain in office workers who already have it. It is the intervention with the largest effect, all the more so the more regularly it is practised. Stretching helps too, more modestly: a four-week programme, at least three sessions a week, was associated with less pain and better mobility.

05. When it is no longer a matter of adjustment

Most workstation-related neck pain is mechanical and benign: it eases as posture improves and the body moves more. But ergonomics has its limits, and it is important to recognise them.

Some signs warrant seeing a health professional (a doctor or physiotherapist) without delay. Pain that persists or worsens despite the corrections. Pain that travels down the arm, with tingling, numbness, or loss of strength. Stiffness that appears after a blow or fall. Recurring headaches linked to the neck. This article describes general ergonomic principles; it is not a substitute for an examination or a diagnosis.

The neck, finally, cannot be fixed in isolation. Visual fatigue makes you crane forward without realising it; a chair with no lumbar support collapses the lower back, and the upper body follows. The boundary between work and rest matters just as much: a workstation you never truly leave keeps a low background tension alive. That is also why the home should remain a place of rest, and not just one more desk.

In practice: where to start

If you were to act this week, the order is simple. First, raise your laptop screen to eye level and add a separate keyboard and mouse: this is the gesture that addresses the most direct mechanical factor, and it asks only for a stand and a few tens of euros of peripherals. Move the screen back to arm's length. Then build movement into the day: standing up every half hour, walking during a call, stretching between meetings. Over time, add a few neck and shoulder strengthening exercises, the best-supported intervention of all. And if the pain resists or comes with unusual signs, have it assessed.

None of these gestures is dramatic. That is exactly what makes them sustainable. The neck does not ask for a perfect setup; it asks that you stop making it carry, eight hours a day, a head bent over a screen set too low.