REAL LIFE NEWS: SEE, I TOLD YOU MOBILE PHONES WERE BAD FOR YOU!
by Hazed
Doctors have identified two new diseases caused by mobile phones: “text neck” and “telepressure”.
Text neck happens when you look downwards at a smartphone. This puts your neck into a bad position. Kenneth Hansraj MD, chief of spine surgery at New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine, explains: “As the head tilts forward the forces seen by the neck surges to 27 pounds at 15 degrees, 40 pounds at 30 degrees, 49 pounds at 45 degrees and 60 pounds at 60 degrees.”
Since people tend to spend an average of two to four hours a day tilting their heads in this fashion in order to read smartphones, send text messages and so on, this isn’t good.
The solution is to try find a posture which keeps your spine neutral when using your phone, rather than spending hours each day hunched over. In other words, hold the phone up to your face. Although no doubt this will put strain on your arm joints and it won’t be long before we read reports of “phone elbow”.
Telepressure, on the other hand, is not a physical ailment. Identified by scientists writing in The Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, it’s the pressure you feel under to respond quickly to work-related emails and other digital communications, which causes stress. The report says, “Organizations rely heavily on asynchronous message-based technologies (e.g., e-mail) for the purposes of work-related communications.” This means that “workers might feel varying levels of preoccupations with and urges for responding quickly to messages from clients, coworkers, or supervisors—an experience we label as workplace telepressure.”
For this problem, the writers suggest a simple remedy: don’t stress about rapid response to email. Easier said than done in today’s over-worked culture!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/25/your_phone_is_slowly_killing_you/
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2014/nov/24/text-neck-how-smartphones-damaging-our-spines
