The Journal of Hand Therapy published a study that compared the grip strength of today’s younger generations (237 people aged 20-34) to older data from subjects who had been measured in the same age bracket and found that today’s youth have lower grip strengths, pretty much across the board. The only group measured in the study who did not show a decrease in grip strength were women between 30 and 34 years old.

The researchers from Winston-Salem State University used the same grip and lateral pinch method to test grips that had been used in tests in 1985, asking subjects to squeeze a hand dynamometer. In 1985, 20 year old men averaged grip strengths of 121 and 24 year old men averaged 105 pounds. The 20 year old men tested in the modern version of the study averaged 101 pounds and 24 year old men 99 pounds. Men aged 25-29 also showed a significant decrease in grip strength. Women aged 20-24 showed decreases in grip strength compared to the older study but the decrease was not as much as men their age, they lost about 10 pounds of grip strength from the generation before them.

The results may mean that the standards of hand strength that were set in 1985 and are still used to determine severity of injuries and recovery times need to be updated to today’s workforce. Younger people in 2016 are more likely to be doing computer work and sitting most of the day, and in 1985 people were doing more active work.

Grip strength isn’t just a good measure of how you might do in an arm wrestling competition, but it can also be an important factor in preventing hand injuries. Even today’s workers, who may not think they are hurting themselves when they are typing away all day, can be susceptible to injuries to their wrists and forearms, and weak grip strength can slow down recovery time or even be a factor in developing an injury in the first place.

Doctors who receive patients with work related hand or wrist injuries may look to grip strength data to benchmark how their patients are healing comparatively, and many support the idea of updating grip strength standards. But since the study was relatively small, with just 267 subjects, more research needs to be done. One of the study’s authors, Elizabeth Fain, thinks that these kinds of standards should be updated every ten years.