Don’t Suffer from the Dreaded Text Neck, Hold Your Smartphone Properly!

You like your privacy. I can’t blame you. Now that we use our smartphones not only on a daily basis but pretty much on an hourly basis, our screens can’t complain about the amount of attention they get from our eyes. We immerse ourselves in our screens in such a way that people can’t see what we’re looking at. The world doesn’t need to know what’s so interesting about what we’re watching or doing. Unfortunately for us, that posture is not good for the neck. What’s worse, is that we’ve built this postural habit due to the number of screen sessions we are having. That can’t be good, and it is not. You can suffer from an injury called text neck. Text neck describes repeated stress injury and pain in the neck resulting from excessive watching or texting on handheld devices over a sustained period of time. Bending the head forward to use a smartphone directly affects the spine. Research has shown that tilting the head forward to 15 degrees places about 27 pounds of force on the neck. This increases to 40 pounds at 30 degrees, 49 pounds at 45 degrees, and 60 pounds at 60 degrees. The symptoms of text neck are among others neck pain, stiffness, soreness, muscle weakness, and headaches. It’s vital to hold your device properly because you’re using it so much.