I understood I was battling a problem when my chiropractor recognized me by my X-rays alone. “Ah, Mr. Thornfield,” he said, looking at the film showing the quite recognizable curve of my upper spine. “Still keeping your phone at navel height, are you?”
I have undoubtedly been using my phone for the following ten years with my neck being bent at a structurally unpleasant ergonomic phone position that can only be described as thumbs whizzing over a screen set just above waist level. A head has a weight of around ten to twelve pounds when is comfortably placed on top of the human spine. With tilting it at the typical smartphone angle, that effective weight soars to 60 pounds. For each day, my poor neck has had to endure the relentless torture of supporting roughly the weight of a second grader.
We are now living in an era of “tech neck,” “text claw,” and “smartphone slouch,” a growing list of physical ailments that would have me laughing but instead are, quite literally, molding our bodies for the worst. It’s guaranteed that future archeologists would analyze our skeletons and identify them on the peculiar forward-head gait and the bizarre thumb-strengthening due to gripping ridiculously oversized gadgets that, paradoxically, are made to fit into pockets that haven’t increased proportionately.
I remember clearly the moment my digital hunch came to my attention, which was during a video call with some of my ex-colleagues. My webcam captured me in profile and thus, when I checked my phone in the middle of the meeting, my phone’s webcam was angled slightly off. The image that met me on my secondary computer monitor was shocking—the contemporary reimagination of the well-known “March of Progress” illustration depicting human evolution. In this version, however, I was in the evolving stage, hunched toward the ground with spine paying homage to the rectangle phone in my hand.
The most ironic characteristic is that I can follow my lifespan’s breakdown until now including my career path. Throughout my life, including my worklife, has been spent leading a more active lifestyle unlike that of my parents’. As a junior developer, I still observed decent posture, utilizing workplace ergonomics and sitting at eye level monitored workstation windows. Yet my body commenced its slow collapse inward with every cycled product being made for smaller form factors. With each product launch, I morphed into my current state which is perpetually craned over screens of different sizes that span as small as phones and as large as printers. My body, along with many other similar bodies, funded the price of digital convenience.
So bizarre are my routines now that my wife has even taken to capturing them on film. Just imagine how a man who is middle aged, dressed in his nighttime pajama bottoms and contemporaneously undergoing a warm-up composed of calisthenics, will look like. Outlandish doesn’t even begin to explain the peculiar creativity of it all. The most memorable part of it all is what I charmingly dub, “the giraffe” hinges, which consist of an upward extension of the neck, full retraction of the chin with shoulders rolled back and hands pulling back (with the help of a resistance band anchored to the door knob of the bedroom). Remarkably, my daughter who is just seven has started to ‘perform’ these stretches as in ‘performing them’ her own impersonation, very exaggerated with her chanting noises.
She said to me the other day: “Daddy, why are you making those weird noises when you stretch?”
“Half-jokingly,” helped guide me to “because I helped design the phones that destroyed my body.”
Tellingly matter of fact dominated his response, “you should have made them taller.”
In her unapologetically candid way, matured down her line: “It’s pretty funny coming to terms with reasoning this absurd being fueled to simply stretch.”
The scope of the transformation impacts more than just the neck and shoulders. Do you pay attention to the unique claw-like shape your hand takes on after an extensive scrolling session? Try thinking about the indentation on your pinky from supporting your phone’s weight. You may even know the thumb tendonitis associated with too much swiping, or the wrist pain associated with device ergonomics gone wrong for several hours.
I don’t think I’ll forget a design meeting that took place in 2011, where we argued about what would be the optimal screen sizes for a new mobile device. There was a so-called “ergonomics expert”, who, despite constantly ignoring her advice, did warn us about how physical impacts of larger screens and usage time could accumulate over time. I think her words were something along the lines of “people weren’t built to hold their arms in this position for extended periods.”
“No one is going to stare at their phone for hours every day,” was product manager’s overconfident retort.
It’s not difficult to see how that turned out.
New research indicates the average American notices about four hours on their mobile screen, excluding other gadgets. This translates to roughly four hours spent hunched over staring at their smartphones. Suffice it to say, the thumbs are expanded unnaturally while the neck is strained. We are collectively undertaking an unparalleled endeavor in human physiology. This reveals that we are training our bodies to bend around technology instead of tailoring the technology to our ergonomics.
As for me, I started the whole physical therapy process about two years ago when I inexplicably woke up one morning with a neck so stiff that I couldn’t turn my head. In simple terms, an acute cervical strain – which stems from chronic mobile usage and poor posture. The physical therapist, who had likely treated hundreds of patients like me over the years, didn’t hide her surprise.
“Let me guess,” she said while turning on the ultrasound on my inflamed muscles, looking at me. “Tech industry?”
When I validated her guess, she sighed. “You people really keep me in business.”
She walked me through exercises to counter a problem she identified as “the smartphone effect.” This condition involved muscular imbalance of the upper back due to prolonged hunching the body forward and needing to stretch the chest muscles that were also held in similar position for prolonged periods of time. While demonstrating proper technique, I noticed her looking at her phone and having perfect posture.
When I pointed this out, she simply shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ve treated so many tech workers I scared myself straight,” she said. “Now I have to hold my phone at eye level. People think I’m taking photos, but I’m actually trying not to become my patients.”
The irony in using an application to time my prescribed anti-technology exercises was rich.
The breadth of this physical adaptation is what makes it most interesting. Health organizations worldwide now acknowledge “text neck” as a reasonable condition. Even children as young as seven are adopting postures previously associated with fifty-year-old office workers. We, as human beings, across cultures and age groups are now converging to a common global physical form shaped around our gadgets.
I began analyzing people in public such as those at airports, coffee shops, or using public transport and I was taken aback by the identical body language exhibited by device users irrespective of age or even nationality. Slumped forward, heads down, heads tucked, and shoulders drooped. It’s like a mass global phenomenon where every human is synced to one extraordinary illogical dance that is being orchestrated by the devices we use. The most astonishing thing about it is how it goes unnoticed by the majority.
My sole act of defiance towards this phenomenon was spending my money on a phone holder that sits around my neck. My teenage son has since refused to ever be seen with me whilst I’m going out wearing the holder. “For your information, I could be cured by the neck brace the doctor was jokingly throwing around, we could both save face out of this” I told him. He decided that walking ten paces behind me was more favorable.
The designs of my device will seem quirky to some people, but it only addresses the symptom of a greater problem. It is not only the posture change that we employ with our mobile devices that is problematic; it is the relation we have formed with them that is problematic since they demand so much attention that people are forcefully contouring their bodies to fit around them.
I sometimes wonder what future humans will look like if this trend continues unmitigated. Quotidian circumstances will benefit those who have greater neck muscles and flexible thumbs because they will be favored due to the stressed environment. Has society failed to progress towards a better dwelling place? Will our skeletons metamorphose into an anthropoid form that meekly succumbs toward a slouched euphoric embrace of a chair like our predecessors joyfully shifted forms when they began walking? Or will we finally realize the impact our aging habits imprint on our bodies and instead create devices that are user-friendly rather than obtrusive?
I chronically try to alleviate the lethargic aftermath my ingrained habits have triggered in my solution bowl – a repetitive posture that is accompanied by a plethora of hunches I try to enchant myself with. To neutralize the problem, I have set posture checks disguised as reminders on all my devices, forcing me to check my stance while seated, which unmanned me during my stretching with the use of manual combat – elegant warfare. But the most masses of my self-assisted calisthenics take shape in what I stationed “analog standing,” when mentally reserving my upright stance matches with the neutral angling me lean into without a pop-up screen in my face ensuring there isn’t a window beckoning me to stare for minutes on at time.
Habit formation is easier than keeping them, I’ve learned. In this world full of notifications and screens, it’s absolutely impossible to maintain good habits. The requirement of discipline to hold the phone at eye level feels counter-intuitive as years of muscle memory suggests instinctively holding it down at waist height.
There’s a chance you might see me fighting against the years of bad habits in the form of bad posture. So if you notice someone sitting at a coffee shop engaging in the unholy act of typing with their thumbs and holding their phone at an eye-level, it’s probably me.
If you try to read this in any portable device hunching it over, take my advice: scale the device to the level of your eyes while straightening your phone and shoulders, visualize a string attached to your head pulling it upwards, and consider yourself free to thank your non-compressed builds down the line along with your future self.
