Never mind that mobile phones have wreaked havoc in traffic and produced a generation of westerners who can’t endure a moment alone. Now the devices have generated their own disability: “Text Neck.”
The term was coined by a South Florida chiropractor who defines the condition as: Overuse syndrome involving the head, neck and shoulders, usually resulting from excessive strain on the spine from looking in a forward and downward position at any hand-held mobile device, such as mobile phone, video game unit, computer, MP3 player or e-reader. This can cause headaches, neck pain, shoulder and arm pain, breathing compromise and much more.
People at risk? Those who twist themselves into unnatural contortions in order to use hand-held devices, often two at a time.
Dr. Dean Fishman came up with the term after noticing among his patients a fast increase in repetitive stress injuries that he traced to hand-held devices. That’s when he created the Text Neck Institute and registered the Text Neck term.