The Body's Addiction to Handheld Tech

Technology has been developing faster than ever before in the past 15-20 years and we humans are sometimes struggling to cath up with this. Constantly changing trends, inventions developing with and incredible speed and making our lives easier, makes all of us happy. Our lives are faster and easier than ever before...
But there is also a dark side about this. First, we the technology lovers wandering off our nature, are starting to pay for this one way or another.

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It was years ago when I bought my first mobile phone. Even if there weren't too many people around me to call, I was soo happy about it..
Yes, I muss confess; I too am a technology lover. Lets call it technology addict. As years passed by, our habits changed. Phones had now became our world in our pockets. Now, one of the two things I should not to forget when leaving the house in the morning was my phone. In a life without smart buddy, I wouldn't be able to pay my bills or go to cinema at weekends. But funniest of all, I wouldn't be able to talk with my friends😉, because they live inside that screen.

You too are probably seeing people on the street, restaurants or metro with their heads bent down looking at the phones in their hands. If you are lifting your heads up and looking around. This isn't only my personal opinion;

A recent study shows that 79% of the population between the age 18-44 have their cell phones with them almost all the time, with only 2 hour of their walking day spendtheir cell on hand .(1)

Don't you think this is insanity too ?

Without going into the social and psychological problems of this addiction, let me talk to you about the part that I know best.

TEXT NECK SYNDROME

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Text neck syndrome is a overuse syndrome caused by having the head bent down for too long. It has the effects of pain in the neck and shoulders, weakness on the regional muscles and it can even lead to nerve compression.

Our head also has a posture and when the posture deteriorates, by the gravity the force applied to the muscles will increase. Increasing of this force causes spasm, pain and weaknesses on the neck muscles. Same way, it causes pain and spasm on the shoulder mucles related to overuse. It forms pain sensitive points on the upper back . While the short term effects are like this, Anterior head position can cause permanent damage and result in:

• Muscle and nerve damage
• Back pain
• Headache
• Decrease spinal curve and spinal disc compression and herniation
• Loss of lung volume capaticty
• Early Arthritis

So, how can we protect ourselves?

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Actually, chronic text neck syndrome treatment has a wide range of treatments from physiotheraphy to injections but before things lead to that serious harm we can do much simpler things to secure us from a big problem.

What to do and what not to do ?

• First we need to change our daily life rotunies.(less phone / tablet usage, less writing more talking with phone)
• On longtime phone or tablet usage, we should take a break every 20 minute
• of course neck stretch and strenght exercise

Just a little tip; If you can't put a limit to our phone/tablet usage, you can ask your friend to take a photo of you when you are doing something on your phone. And make this bad sight your background image. This way you can see this bad looking form of yourselves every time you look at your phone, apply some of the recommendations I mentioned above, and reduce your phone usage unless not very necesarry.

Don’t forget, everything starts with awareness...

pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

references :

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• Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR) Vol-3, Issue-7, 2017
  ISSN: 2454-1362,

• (1) Poonsri Vate-U-Lan International Journal of the Computer, the Internet and Management Vol.23 No.3 (September-December, 2015) pp. 27-3