For those of us who spend hours and hours each day peering down at our mobile devices—Oh God, are you doing that right now while you read??—there’s a new affliction to be worried about: “Text Neck.” It’s an increasingly common problem that’s not nearly as sexy as it sounds. According to one chiropracter, we’re working our muscles overtime, and it’s sort of breaking our necks:
“The condition occurs because the joints and tissue in the neck are not built to withstand being flexed for long periods, and spending hours peering down at a screen puts them under too much stress.”
Makes sense, but what’s the worst that can happen, a neck ache? Think again.
“Keeping the neck and head stretched forwards for long periods could eventually cause the natural curvature of the neck to reverse, potentially leading to serious health problems.”
Yeah, if it gets really bad you might not be able to straighten your neck out at all. Ever again. Yikes, that does sound bad. So, assuming we don’t all want to end up like hunched technology-addled mutants, what can we do to avoid “text neck”? It’s pretty simple, really: we need to look up from our phones once in a while. Also we need to practice lengthening our necks by pulling our chins up and back toward our necks. And stand up straight, young lady! Hmm, that doesn’t sound that hard, but in practice how often are we really going to do this—even if our future health and posture are at stake? Maybe there needs to be an app that makes our phones yell “Put me down! Keep your chin up!” at us every hour or so.
Mobile Phone Users Suffering From “Text Neck” [Telegraph]
Image via Konstantin Sutyagin/Shutterstock.