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Arab Times
2 days ago
- Health
- Arab Times
Screen time comes with a cost: What you need to know about ‘tech neck'
NEW YORK, June 25: As screen time continues to climb, so do the physical consequences. A recent survey by reveals that the average American now spends over 12 hours a day on screens — leading health experts to raise red flags about a condition known as "tech neck." Dr. Jeremy Smith, chief of spine surgery at Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine, California, describes tech neck as pain and stiffness in the neck and shoulders caused by prolonged poor posture while using digital devices. 'Your head weighs about 12 to 20 pounds—roughly the size of a bowling ball,' he said. 'Holding it in a forward position for long periods puts stress on the neck muscles, which respond with pain.' The culprit is simple: bad posture. 'Most commonly, tech neck is seen in people working long hours at a computer,' said Jessica Lefkowitz, a doctor of physical therapy at Bespoke Physical Therapy in New York City. 'People tend to lean toward their screens and round their shoulders, which causes tightness in the chest and upper back.' Slouching on the couch while scrolling through a phone is another major contributor, she added. Symptoms often include neck and shoulder pain, stiffness, and even headaches, said Dr. Peter Whang, a spine surgeon at Yale School of Medicine. In more severe cases, discomfort may extend down the arms. 'If your neck hurts after working at a screen all day and you notice poor posture, you might be dealing with tech neck,' Lefkowitz noted. She suggests recording a side-view video of your work posture to identify issues and track improvement. But if neurological symptoms like tingling, numbness, or burning sensations develop, experts urge seeking medical advice immediately. One key step is reducing screen time where possible. For those who must remain in front of screens for extended periods, Dr. Whang emphasizes the importance of proper posture and eye-level screen placement. Lefkowitz advises setting a timer to check your posture every 30 minutes and pairing that with mobility exercises, such as: Chin nods: Nod your head "yes" 10 times.n Neck rotations: Turn your head left and right 10 times.n Side bends: Bring your ear toward your shoulder on each side 10 times.n Dr. Smith also recommends raising your phone to eye level instead of looking down at your lap. 'Instead of looking at your belly button, hold your device up and give your neck a break,' he advised. Lefkowitz offers the following stretches to help manage tech neck symptoms, advising caution for anyone uncertain about their suitability: Cervical Flexion/Extension: Sit upright. Tuck your chin to your chest, then tilt your head back. Repeat 10 times, three to five times a day.n Cervical Rotation: Turn your head to each side as far as comfortable. Repeat 10 times, three to five times a day.n Cervical Side Bend: Touch your ear to your shoulder, alternating sides. Repeat 10 times, three to five times a day.n Doorway Pec Stretch: Place your arms in a goalpost shape on a doorframe and step forward to stretch your chest. Hold for 30 seconds and repeat three times.n Prone Swimmers: Lie on your stomach with your forehead on a towel. Move your arms from a low-back "handcuffed" position to an overhead dive position.n While these stretches can help ease discomfort, experts caution that persistent or worsening symptoms should be assessed by a healthcare professional. With screen use unlikely to decrease anytime soon, awareness and proactive self-care may be the best defense against tech neck and its growing toll on digital-era posture.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
People who are constantly distracted by their phones at work will just find other ways to procrastinate if it isn't handy
Putting your smartphone away at work may not be a good enough strategy to stop procrastinating, researchers said this week. While limited smartphone access led to reduced use, participants of a recent study were found to have just shifted their focus to a different device. 'The study shows that putting the smartphone away may not be sufficient to reduce disruption and procrastination, or increase focus,' Dr. Maxi Heitmayer, a researcher at the London School of Economics, said in a statement. 'The problem is not rooted within the device itself, but in the habits and routines that we have developed with our devices.' Heitmayer is the author of the study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Computer Science. The small experiment included 22 participants who lived and worked or studied in London. The majority identified as female and were between the ages of 22 and 31. They were asked to work for two days in a private, soundproof room and bring along devices they normally have with them for work. Notably, they did not make any changes to their notification settings. In one test, the phones were placed directly on the participants' desks. In another, the phone was placed on a separate desk just around five feet away. When the phone was further away, researchers found it was used less, but the attention just shifted to the closer laptop. 'It's your connection with loved ones and with work. It's your navigation system, alarm clock, music player, and source of information. Unsurprisingly, people turn to the tool that does everything,' Heitmayer noted. 'Even if you have no clear purpose, you know it has your socials and can provide entertainment.' There are things people can do to fight the disruptions. They can set their notifications to arrive at certain times. They can silence their phones. But, the pull is pretty strong – especially with the allure of social media apps. More than 40 percent of Americans admit being addicted to their phones, according a 2023 study from 'There is a very unequal battle fought out every single day by each and every one of us when we use our phones,' Heitmayer explained. 'The things inside phones that are the biggest attention sinks are developed by large corporations who greatly profit from our failure to resist the temptation to use them; all of this is literally by design,' he said.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
How 3 cellphone addicts say they cut down on screen time and improved their lives
Americans are tethered to their cellphones, checking them 205 times every day, according to a survey conducted by the nonprofit consumer organization and 43% saying they feel 'addicted' to their devices. For those who have lived most or all of their lives in the smartphone age, that addiction is particularly pronounced. Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) spend six hours and 18 minutes on their phones every day. Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) spend six hours and two minutes, while Gen Xers are on their phones four hours and 54 minutes each day. But with cellphones becoming a more entrenched part of daily life, some people have come up with successful strategies for decreasing their screen time — and improving their lives in the process. Three of those people relayed their stories to Yahoo News. In late 2023, Kailani Song, a 15-year-old high school student in Virginia, was horrified by the discovery that she had spent more than 10 hours in a single day on her phone — much of it on Instagram and TikTok — and averaged more than six hours on it every day. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. 'That felt like I was wasting my life away. If I live 90 years, but 30 of those years are on my phone, did I really live those 90 years?' she told Yahoo News. Song decided she needed to take action, but was reluctant to simply go cold turkey. 'I was worried that if I cut it down to a really short amount of time, I wouldn't be able to follow through, because it would be too big of a jump,' she said. 'So, I decided that I would go hour by hour, so that every week, I would lower my screen time by an hour.' She gave herself a six-week timeframe, but after successfully winnowing down the time spent on her phone for two weeks, she realized that getting down to less than an hour a day wasn't going to be possible. 'If I'm asking for help or texting someone so they can help me with my homework, I have to use my phone for that,' she said. Song used the Settings app on her phone to limit the amount of time she could spend on social media apps to just 10 minutes per day, and documented her progress in a YouTube video, the making of which she said held her accountable to stay on track. In addition to improving her posture because she wasn't hunched over her phone for long periods of the day, Song reported other notable life improvements. 'I could go to bed earlier, because I wasted less time and did my homework earlier. I was also more focused,' she said, adding, 'And my energy went up. Being on your phone drains your energy a little bit, I think.' While Song still uses YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, she has continued to adhere to time limits on each platform, and has cut her average daily screen time by more than half, while growing an online support network of people seeking out strategies to kick their cellphone habit. 'When it comes to lowering your screen time, I think just set a very tangible and easy-to-reach goal that you can go for, even if it's just very small steps, like lowering it by 15 minutes,' she said. 'Fifteen minutes is still 15 minutes. And if you have to go on your phone, don't feel guilty about it.' Shortly after the birth of her daughter in 2016, a health and science writer, Catherine Price, was up with her baby in the middle of the night, sitting on the couch, scrolling on her cellphone, when she had a revelation. 'I could see this little baby looking up at her mother, and then her mother looking down at her phone,' said Price, 46, a resident of Philadelphia. She added, 'I thought, 'Oh my God, this is not how I want to be living, and it's not what I want her to think of a human relationship as being.'' Price had watched videos that were part of 'still face' experiments in which researchers compared normal parent interactions with newborns to those with parents who offered no facial expressions, in the way people look when on their phones. 'You could see these babies [in the second group] go through confusion, followed by slight distress, followed by severe agitation,' Price said. 'Babies are only able to focus 10 to 12 inches in front of their faces, and the theory is that they can specifically bond with whoever is holding them,' she added. 'That made me wonder what is happening when we're not returning our baby's gaze. What is that doing to them?' Her epiphany that night sent her searching out 'stuff that had been written to try to find a solution.' But back in 2016, she said, it seemed that no one was 'really talking about this.' 'One of the first things I tried was to get my husband to agree to take a 24-hour break from our phones, a 'digital Sabbath,' people call it,' she said. 'We'd turn off our phones on Friday night and then we'd go through this stage of anxiety where our brains were super twitchy. And then the next morning, time seemed to slow down.' Freed from the obsessive desire to scroll on E-Bay for hours on end in search of items for a home renovation project, Price was shocked to discover how much she could do before 11 a.m. when her phone wasn't part of the picture. 'We'd cooked breakfast, we'd had a conversation, we went for a walk, we played with our daughter,' she said, adding, 'As the day went on, we started to feel this sense of calm that was really surprising. It's almost like you don't realize how stressed out you've been until you take away the stressor.' Price and her husband also implemented other rules, like charging their phones in a closet, clearing their home screen of apps and keeping a strict prohibition on phones in the bedroom. All of those steps were made easier by the digital Sabbath. 'Something about taking a break made the phone have less power over me,' she said. The experience also inspired her to write 'How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life,' a guide on how to go about phone detox. 'I say 'breaking up with your phone,' which doesn't mean dumping it,' she said. 'It's about creating better boundaries and a healthier relationship.' Like Song, Price stresses that the process can be difficult for many people. 'There's so much guilt and shame around this, and this feeling of failure when people don't successfully cut back. We really speak about this as if it's a drug or a food that we're trying to avoid. That isn't really helpful, first of all,' she said. 'Second, there are extremely powerful companies on the other side of your devices and feeds that make money every minute we spend on their apps.' Like Price, Hung Tang, 35, an insurance salesman in South Elgin, Ill., was motivated to take action to address his cellphone addiction after the birth of his child. 'I was like, 'I really need to stop this and spend more time with him,'' Tang told Yahoo News. 'He'd be in his crib, and I'd be on the couch with my phone, and I wasn't paying much attention to him. I wanted to give him my full attention and be in the moment.' An eight-hour-a-day cellphone habit that he said was caused because the devices give you 'access to pretty much anything that you're interested in,' Tang started taking steps to address the issue a month after his son was born. 'I turned the phone off, put it in a different room, but it didn't really work out for me, because in the back of my mind, I always thought, 'What if someone's trying to get in touch with me?'' he said. Ironically, an offer from his cellphone carrier to provide him with a free second line proved to be a solution. 'I gave only my family members the second number,' he explained. 'I left off all the social media, the distraction apps. I had access to my email and my bank.' After he arrives home from work and on weekends, Tang now puts his old phone on airplane mode and powers up the less-loaded version. That way, he said, he isn't tempted to split his attention between mindless scrolling and paying attention to his wife and son. 'I didn't have that doubt in my head that I might be missing something important. It gave me peace of mind,' he said, adding, 'Just by not having access to social media, I started not caring about going to social media anymore. I don't care about what other people are doing, and I've gotten used to staying away from the phone.' As with Price and Song, the benefits have been palpable. 'It made me appreciate life more, just being there in the moment with my son,' Tang said. 'He's growing up so fast.'
