Do you spend a lot of time faced down on your mobile phone? Whether it’s chatting with your friends on social media or checking out Instagram photos of your favorite celebrities?
There aren’t just psychological effects to too much phone usage, especially for school aged children and teens, but physical effects as well. With the average person receiving an annual 2.19 trillion messages, these physical effects are becoming rampant all over the world. Here is a video showing the possible psychological effects of texting to teens.
On the other hand, here are the physical effects of texting on you.
Your body when texting/using your phone
Aching neck and sore back
In case you noticed, you tilt your head down when you use your phone. This posture can put dangerous pressure to the spine. The average head weighs ten pounds, and exerts a 60 pound force when tilted at a 60-degree angle. The consequence of this is a sore back and neck.
What to do: Hold your phone at eye level.
Text Claw
Carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis are common injuries due to excessive use of fine motor movement. Texting utilizes your fine motor skills, hence, you could be prone to these injuries.
What to do: Take hourly breaks off your phone, have weekends without phone usage, exercise your fingers and stretch them to a full range of motion
Breathing Problems
Texting posture makes it difficult to breathe, especially when you hold this posture for a long time. Studies also revealed that we tend to pause our breathing when checking our phones, which they termed screen apnea.
What to do: do breathing exercises at least thrice daily, spend less time away from your phone
Text Thumb
The thumb is kept busy during texting. Excessive use can result in pain and decrease in grip strength.
What to do: Use your phone’s voice recognition software
To some, getting away from their phones seem to be impossible. But try your best to not be on your phone all the time, it will save you from the damages that it can cause in the long run.
This is true for our generation today. What do you do when the damages have already been done? Such as chronic pain.
Hi Daryl,
You may want to check with your GP, or to any healthcare provider you know. If you have chronic pain, I really do suggest you minimize usage.
I got freaking carpal tunnel thanks to my teenage years of awful texting all day.
Normally, I let my phone charge and use it as a time to rest my hands. I don’t really text much but I’m constantly on social media.
Sounds like a good idea.
This is the reason why we shouldn’t let kids at such a young age use gadgets. They’re not responsible and have very little self-control with using phones/gadgets.
During the weekends that it’s time to relax, I’m usually on my phone half of the day and I could really feel that my neck is strained.
I let myself have my phone for leisure time for a maximum of 3 hours per day. No worries because I do answer phone calls, but I don’t spend more than 30 minutes on it unless it’s part of my leisure time of 3 hours.
I think it can really be an addiction when you check your phone every second and you always feel like there’s a notification even if there isn’t!
Carpal tunnel is really painful. Sometimes, even surgeries can’t fix it. I’ve had mine for years and even after surgery I still get unbearable pains.?
That’s horrible. I guess this is really irreversible, which is really scary. We really have to take breaks.
Phone addiction should really be treated seriously. I mean, c’mon, everyone in the population now relies on their smartphones. It has replaced our calendars, notepads, etc.