Your Back Suffers When You Check Your Phone

Your Back Suffers When You Check Your Phone

Phones these days are amazing, we can do almost anything, from finding the best route home to ordering dinner. They’re little supercomputers that fit in your pocket. I could spend all day talking about the many benefits of having a smart phone, and while it’s true that they can help immensely with our everyday lives, it’s based on the premise that we use them in the correct way, otherwise we can fall subject to some of the many downsides.

Some of the problems that can occur include an unhealthy obsession with checking emails and Facebook, and a disconnection from the real world in favor of an online, impersonal one. Now, there’s a new study that’s shedding light on the fact that even the way we hold the phone up to our faces is wrong.

When you arch your head down towards your phone, you’re putting your neck under 60 pounds of pressure, ouch! This article on Huffington Post details the findings of the study by Kenneth Hansraj:

Hansraj created a model of the spine via computer-aided design, and bent the head 0 degrees, 15 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees and 90 degrees, all while measuring the force on the spine. “It’s a very sophisticated assessment of the stresses that are borne by the neck when the head is in various positions,” Hansraj said in a phone interview with The Huffington Post.

“This is one assessment just based on bringing the neck forward,” Hansraj said. Different things could happen to your neck if you’re bending it forward and to the side, he noted.

Stop and think about the position of your neck as you read this, if it’s arching down to see the screen, chances are you’re putting unnecessary pressure on?your spine. The good news is it’s not all that difficult to fix–Simply paying more attention when using your devices will help, keep your head straight, and lift the device further up so you can see it. If you ever needed a better reason to keep your chin up, this is it. Check out the rest of the article for more information about the study.