Our phone obsession is taking a toll on our health. Photo / 123rf
From herniated disks to the macabre-sounding ‘text claw’, these are the symptoms to watch out for and prevent.
It’s the first thing we grab in the morning and the last we see before going to sleep at night. We scroll as we stand in the supermarket and (sneakily) at dinner with friends. We all know it’s bad for us, but our phone addiction is one we don’t have a hope of quitting.
More than 90 per cent of British adults now own a smartphone. A survey published earlier this month by the comparison website Uswitch found the average person scrolls through the equivalent of 43ft 3in of content daily: this translates to almost the height of the Elizabeth Tower that houses Big Ben every week – the equivalent of three miles, annually.
But our national phone obsession is taking a toll on our health. “The negative impacts can range from eye strain and neck and back pain to sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression and decreased concentration,” says counselling psychologist Dr Rina Bajaj.
Here are the risks to be aware of and some simple solutions to lessen the impact.
As the name implies, “tech neck” is the result of hanging our heads down to look at our phones.
“To prevent gravity from pulling us too far forwards, our neck muscles have to work hard, but they’re designed to move, not to be held static for long periods,” says Nell Mead, a London-based musculoskeletal physiotherapist. “They become tired and overloaded, and our discs get compressed, leading to neck, shoulder and upper back pain, as well as tension headaches – all of which can continue long after you put the phone down.”
Over time, these problems can grow increasingly debilitating. “The discs in the spine can bulge and sag, which is very uncomfortable,” says Mead. “Eventually, some people can suffer a herniated disc, where its outer band cracks causing it to leak toxic fluid. This can trigger nerve pain in the arms.”
Neck and back pain accounts for more than 12million working days lost every year. Thankfully, however, there’s a straightforward way to prevent tech neck taking hold: moving the body regularly to give our muscles a break.
If getting up for a walk or squeezing in a few stretches isn’t possible, Mead recommends simply pausing every 20 minutes, putting down our phones and spending two minutes with our heads tipped back, looking up at the ceiling. “This extends the neck and allows the muscles to relax, reversing the strain,” she says.
The Uswitch survey, which polled 2,000 Britons, found the most common complaint resulting from phone use is eye strain, with 22 per cent of users saying they had suffered the problem. Some 16 per cent said they had also experienced headaches or dry eyes.
According to Denise Voon, a clinical adviser to the College of Optometrists, we tend not to blink as much as we normally do when staring at a phone screen – between one and three times per minute, compared with 20 times ordinarily.
“Our eyes dry out, causing that uncomfortable gritty feeling, and sometimes blurry vision, too,” she says. “Blinking more and using eye drops three or four times a day can help.”
More debilitating are the dull eye pain and headaches that result from eye strain, caused by fixing your focus on one spot for a long time. Voon suggests following the 20-20-20 rule: “Every 20 minutes, you look at something 20 metres away for 20 seconds. It’s a quick and easy way to give your eye muscles a rest.”
The brightness of the phone’s screen can exacerbate problems.
“Ideally, you want your screen as dull as possible without making it impossible to read,” says Voon. Book regular eye tests to check there are no underlying issues and to ensure your glasses or contact lenses are the correct prescription.
Do you sit down to tackle a task, only to find yourself getting distracted by messages arriving on your phone or a sudden urge to check social media? If you do, you’re in the majority. Our attention has become so scattered by information overload that our concentration is shot to pieces. In her book Overwhelmed, author Brigid Schulte describes this tendency to do too many little things at once as “time confetti”.
To psychotherapist Hilda Burke, author of The Phone Addiction Workbook, it’s all familiar. “I hear clients say, ‘I’m never really off, because I’m never really on.’ Our brains can never get a proper break, but we’re also never really 100 per cent focused on one task.”
We evolved to interpret interjections such as pings from our phones as warnings of danger, meaning we hear them and our adrenalin spikes. “Research has shown that even just seeing the phone can have a similar impact, so if you need to concentrate on a task for a period of time, switch it off and put it in another room,” says Burke.
If this sounds too tough, she suggests installing a screensaver on your phone as a reminder to stop and think about whether you really need to use it. “Someone I know used a big stop sign,” she says. An elastic band around the phone serves the same purpose.
It can also be useful to rearrange the layout of your home screen, hiding the most time-sucking apps in folders to make them trickier to access.
The Uswitch research found that almost one in five phone users had suffered “text claw” – cramps in the hand and wrist – and one in 10 had suffered repetitive strain injury, or RSI.
“Hand and wrist problems are growing more common, particularly with the trend for bigger phones, as these place more strain on our muscles when we hold them,” says Mead. “Problems are down to the fact we’re doing very repetitive movements, so the muscles and tendons can get overloaded, potentially resulting in tendinitis.”
Many of us also hold the phone with the same hand we’re using to scroll and tap – a particularly bad idea, according to Mead, because it forces the finger and thumb muscles to try to grip and stretch at the same time, “which is really hard work”.
Mead advises choosing a smaller phone if possible, “but if yours is large, getting a ring holder to attach to the back can help. Always use two hands to operate it. And when you’re going to be sitting stationary, for example at work, put it in a stand so you can use it without holding it.”
Half of British adults don’t get the recommended seven or eight hours’ sleep a night – and our phones are a major contributing factor. A recent study released by the think tank Onward highlighted how phone use in the hour before bed leads to disrupted sleep, which is bad news for the many of us who continue scrolling until the moment we close our eyes.
For many years, it was believed that the blue light emitted by phones was the culprit, preventing our bodies from producing the sleep hormone melatonin. Now, says sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley, “we know that actually, light of any colour immediately before bed can cause problems with sleep”. As can the limitless stimulation it offers, which makes it almost impossible for the brain to switch off.
“The science suggests we should avoid light for two hours before bed, but obviously that’s unrealistic,” says Dr Stanley. “I suggest 40 minutes, in the expectation people will do 20.”
If you suspect that drastically changing your bedtime routine may actually prevent you from winding down, try to stick to watching relaxing rather than highly stimulating films or programmes on TV before bed – and don’t be tempted to check work emails.
“Overnight, leaving your phone in another room and using a proper alarm clock is optimal,” says Dr Stanley. “Failing that, make a conscious effort not to interact with it in the night.”
The new doco follows the Sussexes' Harry & Meghan, Live to Lead, and Heart of Invictus.