Trying to prise your teenager off their Smartphone may be about as difficult as training a puppy not to chew your new leather shoes, but it’s necessary all the same.
According to our London chiropractor, the posture we adopt as we use our mobiles significantly increases the amount of stress on the neck. Our heads weigh between 10 and 12lb but the effective weight on our necks increases the more we angle our heads down. If your teenager bends their head at a 60 degree angle to use their phone, the amount of weight their neck holds will rise to around 60lb! To put the problem in perspective, your teenager could accumulate between 700 to 1400 annual hours of excess neck strain by spending between two and four hours a day using a Smartphone.
There is a very real risk between frequent mobile phone use and symptoms such as neck pain, head pain, arm pain and numbness.
You can lower this risk by educating your children on the dangers of excessive Smartphone use and limiting the amount of time they are allowed to use such devices. You can also encourage your kids to regularly change their texting positions and to use voice recognition.
Don’t let your kids become the next victims of this modern day health complaint!