Looking down at your phone puts about 27 kg of pressure on your neck
Your head weighs about 5 kg upright. Tilt it forward 60 degrees to read your screen and the load on your neck rises more than five times.
An adult head weighs about 5 kilograms, roughly the same as a large watermelon. When you hold it straight, balanced over your shoulders, your neck carries that easily.
Tip it forward, though, and the load changes. A spinal surgeon in New York calculated the forces on the neck at different angles. At 15 degrees, the neck carries around 12 kg. At 30 degrees, about 18 kg. At 60 degrees, the angle most of us adopt to look at a phone in our lap, it is about 27 kg. That is like having a seven or eight-year-old child hanging from your neck, for the hours a day we spend looking at screens.
Over time this can strain the muscles, ligaments and discs of the neck and upper back. Doctors see more and more young people with neck pain, stiffness, headaches and shoulder aches, a pattern some now simply call "text neck".
Easy fixes - Raise the phone to eye level instead of dropping your head to it. It looks odd for a day, then it feels normal. - Put your laptop on a stand or a stack of books, and use a separate keyboard, so the screen is at eye level. - Every 20 to 30 minutes, roll your shoulders back, tuck your chin in gently, and look up. - Strengthen your upper back with simple exercises, like squeezing your shoulder blades together ten times, a few times a day. - Neck pain that spreads into the arm, or comes with tingling, numbness or weakness, needs a doctor's check.
Where this comes from - Hansraj KK. Assessment of stresses in the cervical spine caused by posture and position of the head. Surgical Technology International, 2014.
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