Do you stop to think about your postural alignment when you’re on your smartphone? There are nearly 300 million smartphone users in the U.S. alone, and 90% of the population has one. Everywhere you go, you see people with their heads down, even while walking. People are always sitting and looking forward with their heads down because they’re holding their smartphones below their chests.
This situation creates a problem or a postural dysfunction that then leads to other disorders of the:
- Head
- Neck
- Upper back
- Lower back
This is potentially harmful. Now we’re not saying that looking down at your phone for a few minutes is a problem. But in reality, people get fixed in this position for several minutes (or even hours) at a time, multiple times per day, when focused on their smartphones. Let’s look at how this is harmful and how you can improve your health with good smartphone posture.
Looking Down at Your Smartphone Causes Stress to Your Body
To understand why looking down for a long period of time has a negative impact on your body, let’s use an analogy.
Imagine a bowling ball on a stick. Think of a 10-pound bowling ball, which is about the average weight of someone’s head, propped up on the end of a stick. For every inch that bowling ball goes forward, it puts pressure on the stick.
Now the bowling ball is your head, and the stick is your spine.
At three inches forward of your shoulders, your head is exerting pressure on your spine of over 40 pounds. That’s the amount of stress that position is putting on the neck and the shoulder area, in that junction between the neck and the upper back. And that’s quite a bit of pressure!
Symptoms of Poor Posture from Smartphone Use
As you can see, looking down at your smartphone for prolonged periods can put a tremendous strain on the neck and upper back. This can cause:
- Headaches
- Neck pain
- Upper back pain
- Shoulder pain
- Tightness in neck muscles
- Tightness in shoulder muscles
- Numbness and tingling down the arms
Long-Term Poor Posture Can Impact Your Activity Level
Having a forward posture even makes it hard to do overhead activities. People who have been fixed forward for many hours a day looking at their smartphones have a hard time elevating their arms. This is because if you try to elevate your arms with your head forward and your shoulders hunched over, you won’t be able to move them up very far. But if you have a more upright posture, it’s much easier to elevate overhead.
If you do sports or need to do overhead motions through the day and you’re having a hard time doing that, it’s likely due to your posture. Gravity does eventually win; it defeats us all. We don’t need any additional help from bad posture which affects:
- Shoulder function
- Head and neck mobility
- Upper back mobility
- General health of soft tissues
There are a myriad of symptoms that could come about just in the upper quarter of your body, your head, and your neck from the prolonged use of a smartphone in a poor posture.
How to Correct and Prevent Smartphone-Related Postural Issues
If you’ve been fixed in that “head looking down” position for a long period of time, our physical therapists can help. We often need to open up or stretch out the chest muscles. We can also help strengthen the upper back muscles and direct you on postural improvement. For example, imagine you had a string pulling you up tall and getting your entire spine more upright. You need to do that more often; that helps with postural improvement.
Other steps you can take to improve your posture include:
- Change the Way You Use Your Smartphone
If you can, hold your device at a higher level. You’re not going to be too successful holding it at a high level for a long period of time because your arm’s probably going to get tired, but it’s better than wearing out your neck and back. The simplest thing is just to correct yourself every few minutes and straighten your posture if you do have to be fixed on a device.
But more importantly, get the device up so you don’t have to hold onto it. Get it up at head and neck level in your line of sight. You’ll save yourself a lot of pain, strain, and stress on the head, neck and upper shoulders and upper back area.
- Be More Aware of the Time You Spend on Your Device
You need to become more aware of how long you’re in this position. Someone can get into that smartphone position and stay there; and doing it day after day really is destructive. It can be destructive in the low back area particularly if you’re doing this while sitting—because that puts a tremendous amount of strain on the lower back, head, and shoulders. So you need to be more aware of this.
- Take Care of Your Body to Prevent Postural Issues
Do corrective exercises to strengthen your upper back. You can lie on the ground or on the floor with your arms elevated just to let your spine redirect itself into a more neutral position. Doing that every day will help improve your postural alignment and stretch things back out. That will get your posture closer to normal so you can get back in that correct position, but you have to work at it. It’s easier just to correct it many times a day, but if you need a little help with stretching tight structures or tight tissues and improving your spinal alignment, our physical therapists are here for you.
Improve Your Posture and Reduce Your Pain at Rebound
If you or someone you know has a problem with aches and pains from bad posture, we’re happy to help you out. It’s pretty simple to fix. The first thing to do is make you more aware of it. The second thing to do is get you on a postural improvement or postural correction program. And our experts know just what to do to get you started.
Call us at 785-271-5533 to schedule your physical therapy screening and get on the road to better postural health today.
Tags: Shoulder Pain Relief, Back Pain Relief, Neck Pain Relief, Neck Pain, Low Back Pain Relief, Joint Pain Relief, Back Pain
