The Effects of Texting on Your Neck

On average, how many minutes a day do you think you spend looking down at your phone? Whether you’re spending a lot of time texting or conducting any other business on your phone or not, the impact on your neck after even a few minutes can cause you a tremendous amount of issues.

Dr. Kenneth Hansraj, the Chief of Spine Surgery with New York Spine Surgery & Rehabilitation Medicine, has studied this effect and found that the force of having your head tilted forward for long periods of time has damaging results on the cervical area of your spine.

A human head weighs around 5kg. Therefore, when you are standing or sitting with good posture (which is defined as head sitting squarely on your shoulders with your shoulders down and back), there is around 5kg of force straight downward on your cervical spine. If you lean forward just slightly, creating a 15 degree angle in your neck, that amount of pressure more than doubles, increasing to 12kg. In essence, it is like your head now weighs 12kg which would put an extreme amount of pressure on your neck while trying to hold it up. Bend your head forward a little more and it gets even worse. For instance, Dr. Hansraj found that a 30 degree forward tilt raises the pressure to roughly 18kg, and a 45 degree bend means that your neck is trying to deal with just under 22kg of pressure!

Being aware of this fact is the first step to correcting the issue. The second step involves spending less time on your phone, and raising it to eye level when you do need to access it. Of course, regular chiropractic adjustments can help put your neck back in place too, but remember that it is always better and easier to prevent an issue than it is to treat it.