Smartphone use causes issues with your neck: Study
Study states that constant use of the smartphone causes issues with the user’s neck
An average person uses his or her smartphone for around four hours each day. Each person looks down onto the smartphone’s screen to read the content or check something on the display.
According to a study on Science Alert, this amounts to a whopping 1,400 hours of stress to the cervical spine each year. The cervical spine is the area between the head and the shoulder, behind the neck. According to the study, we put a good 27 kilos of force on our neck. Shocked with the weight specified? You may think this is not logically correct, but it is.
Our head is heavy and weighs about 5.5 kg in average. When we look down, the gravitational force pulling down out head is huge and causes the stress to build up on the neck or the cervical spine.
The study was led by Kenneth Hansraj, chief spinal and orthopaedic surgeon at the New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine in the US, who used a 3D model of the human spine to measure the effects of constantly bending our heads down to check our phones.
“As the head tilts forward, the forces seen by the neck surge to 27 pounds (12 kg) at 15 degrees, 40 pounds (18 kg) at 30 degrees, 49 pounds (22 kg) at 45 degrees and 60 pounds (27 kg) at 60 degrees,” Hansraj reports in the journal Surgical Technology International. "The weight seen by the spine dramatically increases when flexing the head forward at varying degrees. These stresses may lead to early wear, tear, and degeneration, and possibly surgeries.”
But hold on—don’t just panic! The report on Science Alert also specified that Sydney-based musculoskeletal physiotherapist Tamer Sabet told Rachel Clun at The Sydney Morning Herald that neck pain can be the result of an array of factors, such as age, sex, type of employment and various stresses, including - but not restricted to - phone use.
"From a purely physical perspective, the findings of what they're proposing make sense; however, pain is appreciated to be multidimensional,” she said. "There is an increasing body of information on genetic predisposition, personality traits or mood, and physical environment [as being associated with neck pain].”
The study is at an initial stage as yet and does not mean the pain in the neck is the roo cause of smartphone use. You don’t need to give up your phone as yet, but expect you to be aware of the issue and correct your posture while checking your smartphone. This will help in the long future.
