Text Neck: How Technology Can Be a Pain in the Neck

If you’re like most people nowadays, you don’t go anywhere without your phone. You likely use it for everything from looking up directions on a map app to retweeting something funny while you sit in a waiting room and texting your best friends. In fact, it is estimated that the average person touches their phone 2,617 times every day!

While convenient and useful for accomplishing tasks, this piece of technology has come with some painful downsides. If you spend significant time on your phone without using proper posture, you could experience what is commonly called text neck. In this post, you’ll learn more about this problem and how you can avoid and treat it with the professional help of a chiropractor.

Causes of Text Neck

Text neck occurs when the head is jutted forward frequently and for long periods of time. In addition to neck pain, text neck can give you headaches and upper back pain. Your head, which likely weighs about 11 pounds, is meant to be perfectly balanced in an aligned position with your spine. The ligaments and muscles that stabilize it are flexible and allow for movement, but consistently poor head posture, or holding the head in a forward position, is bound to lead to text neck.

Believe it or not, the symptoms of text neck are actually nothing new. Long before smart phones and handheld technology, people have struggled with neck and upper back pain and headaches because of poor head posture. For instance, looking down to read a book for prolonged periods of time can have the same effect. However, technology has exacerbated this problem and made it more prominent.

Treating Text Neck

The simplest solution for text neck would be to shorten the time you spend with technology every day. Unfortunately, these devices have become a mainstay in modern life and are unavoidable. However, you can lessen the pain that looking at your devices causes by maintaining appropriate head posture. Try to hold your phone or tablet at or just below eye level in front of you. As much as possible, keep your head in the ideal position and look down with your eyes without bending your neck forward.

Not only can you use better head positioning, but you can also get help from a chiropractor, who specializes in keeping your body perfectly aligned. They can provide therapies that correct bad posture and advice for exercises or stretches to decrease pain.

Ultimately, through healthy posture and some professional help, text neck doesn’t have to interfere with your ability to work and function in this modern world. You can continue to tweet, post, and text to your heart’s content while steering clear of pain.

About the Author

Dr. Chad Wills has been a chiropractor for more than 20 years. In his continuing education since graduating from the Life Chiropractic University in Atlanta, he has become certified in Chiropractic Biophysics, one of the most thoroughly researched and trusted treatment protocols. If you struggle with text neck, you can schedule an appointment with Dr. Wills by contacting Wills Chiropractic through our website or by calling 239-331-6060.