Relationship between smartphone use and the severity of head flexion of college students

Abstract

Frequent and prolonged head forward flexion posture of smartphone users has been considered as a key risk factor for various pain symptoms or musculoskeletal problems of the neck and neighboring areas. Although smartphone users are known to make large head flexion to look down the smartphone while holding the phone with their hands, it has not yet been studied whether the duration of smartphone use and the severity of head flexion angle would linearly related or not. In this study, the correlation between the total duration of smartphone use and the severity of head flexion was quantitatively evaluated from the unobtrusively collected head flexion angle data and smartphone usage history data of 22 participants. In results, it was found that participants spent more than 2 hours (out of 8-hour period) with their smartphone and more than 90 minutes with the head flexed between 30 and 50 degrees. Correlation coefficient between the two variable was 0.293. While the result of this study indicates relatively weak correlation between the two, it still suggests that heavy smartphone users would make the large head flexion longer than light smartphone users. Further research with more samples of various occupations and smartphone usage patterns would strengthen the findings of this study.