The Text Neck Epidemic Part I: Identifying the Cause

Did you know for every inch your head is moved forwards past your shoulders, the amount of strength your neck has to produce to keep it there increases drastically? Every morning, I start my day with a 45 minute commute on the MTR. And every morning, I am greeted with the back of the necks of all my fellow commuters. Heads down, earphones in, eyes glued to their device screens. Even the MTR has taken notice, displaying a side panel warning on the TV monitors about the dangers of neck pain due to these prolonged postures. The irony of the fact is, their target audience are the very ones who are least likely to look up and even see this warning.

Understandably people are focused on what they are doing and are likely unaware (at least at the beginning) that this daily repetitive, small but highly stressful action can cause significant pain over time. The reality of it is that we are faced with living in a modern world that requires constant availability, fast paced influxes of information and hence, prolific use of technology. It doesn't help that work often causes stress, which only further exacerbates the strain in the neck. How can we keep up with our lives, our work, our friends, without the use of computers, phones, tablets or whatever the next gadget is?

Sadly, even if we take the devices away completely, our daily activities often require us to be in a forward head postures as well, so the addition of multiple hours of stressful work in these postures does nothing to improve our situation.

Are you at risk? Ask a friend to take a picture of your profile (from the side) with you standing naturally (naturally is key! Trying to stand straighter now isn't fooling anyone but yourself). Then ask yourself if you can see your shoulders rounding forwards? Your midback looking hunched or excessively rounded? A mini "humpback" at the base of your neck? Does your head look like it's sticking out a lot further forward than your shoulders? If so, these are all signs of progressively worsening text neck!

The first step is recognition, the next step is to start thinking about what postures are causing these problems. So let's identify the situations that create excessive stresses in the neck:

1. Using your phone/Reading a book/studying - Obviously, as per the phrase "text neck," looking down at the screen of a phone/tablet/device or at a book, whether that is standing, seated or lying down is one of the biggest culprits. This gets worse as your arms get tired and your head drops further and further forward to compensate.

2. Using a laptop - Despite their conveniences in portability, laptops are extremely non ergonomic, in terms of neck flexion, wrist deviation and forearm pronation (we'll get into these last two later).

3. Cooking/Food prep - While we don't think about it much, sometimes prepping and cooking can be over an hour of looking down at a countertop.

4. Slouched sitting - Soft couches or sitting with a slouched posture, creates a curve in your midback that continues into excessive neck flexion. Combining this with the use of gadgets only exacerbates this problem.

5. Parenting - Parents all know the feeling of doing things around the house, all the while keeping one eye on the kids. Unfortunately, their small stature combined with their love of crawling, rolling and hiding under furniture means you're spending a lot of time looking downwards at them.

You'll find that this continual forward head posture leads to those signs of rounding in the mid-back and forward rolling of your shoulders. Eventually, this "hunchbacked" posture becomes more and more "normal," requiring your neck to extend further and further out in front of you to maintain eye level. At some point along this progression, some may start to experience tightness and pain in the neck, back, traps, and/or shoulders. For others, it may lead to headaches, a sense of fatigue or even structural straightening of the neck.

Everyone is different, so you may not feel these 5 situations necessarily apply to you, but pay attention to your postures throughout the day, and you can begin to recognize which activities that are specific to you that may cause the same problems. At the end of the day, the main takeaway of this post is to be AWARE of what posture you are in, and how long you are in these postures.

Think: What postures or activities are the most aggravating for you?

Stay tuned for Part II, where we will identify some every day solutions to these situations.