Did you know in the year 2000, Bill Clinton didn’t have an email address. Now the president of the USA has nearly 51 million followers on Twitter! Times they are a changing! And with change comes new problems – re text neck.
“Text Neck” or “Tech Neck” is changes to the shape of kids spines due to bad posture. Bad posture from spending hours looking down at a smart device, or slumped forward on a computer.
You can tell by looking at someone’s posture from side on. Does their head jut forward? Do they seem to have an obvious lump at the base of their neck? Are their shoulders rounding forward?
More often than not these changes will start, but there will not be any symptoms initially. Over time, text neck tends to get worse and can lead to headaches, neck pain, shoulder pain, mid back pain, lower back pain and other postural complications. It can even cause numbness and pain into the arms and hands.
This can lead to behavioural issues and difficulty concentrating.
Whilst this used to be more common in office workers, it’s now not uncommon to see children as young as 12 suffering from text neck.
What can you do?
Prevention is better than cure!
- Screen time is inevitable in today’s world – exercise unfortunately isn’t. Make sure your child gets at least 1 hour of physical activity every day
- When using smart devices don’t hold them in your lap. Hold them in front of you so your head isn’t hanging from your shoulder.
- Target your postural muscles with these 3 simple exercises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym1IttBz3vM&t=1s
If in doubt – ask us. A very large portion of our practice is postural correction – it absolutely can be done. We combine specific adjustments to the spine to restore motion and normal position of the joints and incorporate specific postural exercise, massage and neuromuscular re-education.
Of course – the worse your posture, the more work is involved, so correcting the problem sooner than later is advised.
