Smartphone, Friend or Enemy?

Smartphone, Friend or Enemy?

Smartphones are essential gadgets in everyone’s life. Multi-functional applications, health-tracking systems, texting, and gaming could highly motivate users to spend up to 6.5 hours per day on their smartphones. Increasing use of smartphones, brings out the question on the safety of handling this device for a long time. What are the consequences of spending this much of time on smartphones? 

"Text Neck Syndrome" is a common smartphone-related musculoskeletal disorder among users, highly associated with forward flexion of the neck and prolonged texting. Pain in the neck, back, shoulder, finger, hand and tingling in upper extremities are initial signs of this syndrome and untreated pain can lead to irreversible consequences, including disc compression and spinal cord degeneration just to name as a few. 

The story doesn’t end here. Neck forward flexion is an important risk factor for radicular upper extremity pain. We neck is in neutral position, there is about 4.5-5.5 kg force on the cervical. Increasing the flexion up to 60 degree, the force is magnified up to 27 kg, which is a huge pressure for muscles and vertebras in the neck region. The average degree of neck flexion among most users is about 45 degrees creating a 12 kg force on cervical vertebras. 

I Cannot Give Up On My Smartphone, Is There A Way To Remain Healthy? 

Regular physical activity is the key to prevent from many of musculoskeletal disease, including the Text Neck Syndrome. Muscular activity increases the muscles ability in carrying heavier loads and keeping the posture in a neutral position.  

Try to keep a 10 min alarm on your mind. Ten minutes is the time when fatigues begins in your muscles, and just about time when mechanical pressure starts to cause damages in joints, ligaments, muscles or discs. Take a break every 10 minutes. Do not ignore the pain, stop working with your device and change your posture.

Remember the 10 Minute Alarm!

The number of smartphone users increased to up to 3 billion users in 2018 which pops-up the alarming rate of musculoskeletal disorders in about half of the world population. Controlling and managing the duration of smartphone usage, cessation of bad postures and uneven pressure on soft tissue are two important factors to stay safe and healthy, while enjoying your smartphone.  

By Zahra Vahedi

Msc in Ergonomics 

USERN Deputy of Publicity