What Your Phone Is Doing to Your Body, and How to Fix It
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Photo by Kerde Severin
Today’s guest post is offered up by Katy Bowman, biomechanist and author of the bestselling Move Your DNA. Her recent book, Rethink Your Position examines how in our overwhelmingly sedentary culture, we don’t just need to “move more.” We need to move—and sit, and lie, and work, and rest—better, in positions that give us the varied and targeted motions our bodies need to thrive. I’m happy to welcome a good friend back to Mark’s Daily Apple to share on this topic.
Take a quick look around and you’ll see bodies everywhere—in most venues, across all ages—staring fixedly at a smartphone (to notice this, you might need to stop looking at your own phone for a minute). Not only are people’s eyes fixed on the screen, it’s like their entire body is being bent and pulled down towards these tiny black holes we call our “phones” (but which are more often used as multimedia entertainment devices).
When it comes to our device-shape, what’s mostly at play here is mindlessness plusthese new devices with an endless stream of captivating content, and when we dive online (which is often), we’re not only logging on with our eyeballs, we’re also logging on with our bodies.
Discussions around phone posture focus primarily on forward head/tech neck, but being on your phone is a whole-body sport with whole-body effects… from your eyeballs to your feet.
Your Phone Is Moving Your Head and Neck
Remember back in the olden days (fifteen years ago) when if you wanted to talk on the phone “hands-free,” you had to crane your head to one side and hold the phone between your shoulder and ear? Phones have always been a pain in the neck.
Today’s smartphone movements look different, but they still often involve the head and neckmoving in extreme positions for long periods of time. Fortunately, our devices don’t require that we get into specific “device-shape” for them to work; we’re just not thinking about positioning ourselves in a sustainable way. We have options when it comes to our position—yes, even when using the smartphone.
Head ramping
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