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Those Who Live by the Smartphone are Now Diseased by it
Constant
connect to virtual world gives rise to range of health problems like ‘text
neck’ and ‘BlackBerry thumb’
Indians
love their smartphones, some of them to the point of obsession. They sneak
a peek at the mobile an astonishing 150 times a day. According to a
research by Nokia this year, an average person checks the phone every
six-and-a-half minutes in a 16-hour waking cycle. As for the rate at which
the device is being adopted, there are 51 million smartphone users in urban
India today, 89% higher than 27 million in 2012, according to Nielsen
Informate Mobile Insights. Silicon Valley venture capital firm KPCB put the
number of Indians with smartphones even higher at 67 million in June. This
is set to rise even further as the devices become cheaper. Not
surprisingly, constant connectedness is giving rise to a range of health
problems — of mind and body. The physical afflictions relate to the repeated
use of muscles in ways that the body is not habituated to. Doctors report
thumb and index finger injuries, apart from ‘text neck’, caused by
inclining the head while peering at the screen. Take the case of
Chandigarh-based engineer Harpreet Singh (Twitter handle: @harryjerry).
Singh, 27, is an independent consultant for mobile application marketing
firms and spends at least 15-16 hours on planet virtual. Here are the
numbers that reflect his social media engagement — more than 67,000 tweets
and an approximate 81 lakh keystrokes on Twitter since he joined the
service in 2007. When he’s not on his tablet or computer, Singh checks a
stream of WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter messages. Smartphone-Induced
Injuries on the Rise
Over the last few years, he has developed chronic dry eye syndrome because
of excessive exposure to screens.
“The only time I am not in front of a screen is when I'm sleeping,” he
said.
Nidhi Kataria, a Delhi-based senior marketing executive (South Asia) at
MoneyGram International, recently bought the latest iPhone and found
herself unable to put it down.
“It’s like an extension of my arm. I don’t want to miss a LinkedIn,
Facebook or WhatsApp notification, however unimportant it may be,” she
said. But when she started to get nightmares about not having replied to
work email and messages, she decided to spend at least an hour away from
her phone every day.
Carpal tunnel syndrome was among the first ailments to be recognised as
occurring due to constant computer use. Then, with the BlackBerry becoming
near ubiquitous, excessive use of the digit for typing on the tiny
keyboards gave rise to the ‘BlackBerry Thumb’. Incidentally, another injury
named after a device is Wiiitis, caused by excessive gaming on Nintendo’s
Wii.
Smartphone induced injuries are rising, said Dr Gurinder Bedi, senior
consultant and orthopaedic surgeon at Fortis Hospital in Delhi. Of the
20-25 patients he sees every day, at least 10% face smartphone and
computer-related injuries in the 20-45 age group.
“These are usually upwardly mobile patients who are constantly looking at
their phone in a bentforward position,” he said. They complain of their
backs stiffening up, developing a stoop and text neck besides the tendons
in their thumbs hurting when they text, he said.
Twitter's 2013 statistics report shows that 60% of their 200 million active
users globally log in through a mobile device at least once every month.
Facebook data show that in India it had 82 million monthly active users as
of June 2013.
Tendon injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, radiation related problems,
inattention blindness and computer vision syndrome are common ailments that
stem from unrelenting mobile usage, said Noida-based orthopaedist Dr
Smarajit P Chakrabarty.
The solutions are preventive in nature and essentially amount to this –
moderation. Doctors advise breaks every hour and stretching. And it’s not
just the younger people who need to be aware of the dangers.
“The use of smartphones and computers is more common in the new generation,
but strain from overuse can happen at any age,” said Chakrabarty.
Smartphone over-use is similar to online addiction, to the extent that it
becomes difficult to engage with the real world outside the screen.
Social media and mobile phone addiction can destroy relationships,
especially family ties, psychologists said.
“Parents are at loggerheads with their children saying they don't pay
attention while they speak to them,” said Dr Geetanjali Kumar, a
psychologist, counsellor and family therapist based in Delhi. But this is a
two-way street -- parents are equally preoccupied with WhatsApp or
Facebook. “And somewhere, I feel children are losing trust in parents
because of this,” she said.
Some young people are setting limits to the time they spend on the smartphone.
Parul Bhadoo, 26, is one of them. She has in any case never been a heavy
social media user and though she does get notifications on her phone all
day long, she makes a point of switching off push email and muting WhatsApp
messages while at work as an assistant manager at Indusind Bank in Delhi.
So, the next time you pick up your phone to tweet, post a status message,
reply to an email or take a selfie, ask yourself: Do I really need to do
that right now?
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