Tech Neck Syndrome: A global epidemic of the modern era among students at the University of Abomey Calavi in Benin

Abstract

Context and Objective“Tech neck” is a recent term used to describe neck pain related to smartphone use. It is a health problem that has been increasing considerably since the last decade. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of Teck Neck syndrome among young students at the University of Abomey Calavi, in order to highlight the different factors that contribute to the occurrence of this condition. Patients and MethodThis is a prospective descriptive study with consecutive sampling conducted over a period of 3 months. The study involved 1,835 young students at the University of Abomey Calavi in Benin, 850 of whom had symptoms of Tech Neck.Epi Data 3.1 software was used for data entry and R software for statistical analysis. Proportions were calculated for qualitative variables. Quantitative variables were expressed as mean ± standard deviation. The Wilcoxon test was used to compare means. The significance level was set at risk alfa = 0.05. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. ResultsFor 421 (49.52%) of the participants, their symptoms would be caused by prolonged neck flexion when writing messages. Of the 1835 students, 1368 (74.55 %) reported constant communication by telephone message. In this study, 55.91 % and 89.43 % of participants respectively stated that they could not determine how often they handled their smartphone within 1 h and 24 h. None of the participants kept their neck straight when writing a message. ConclusionThe Tech neck syndrome is a health problem that has increased considerably over the last decade, especially among students, due to the misuse of NICT.