“Text neck” pain and excessive smartphone usage among students

Abstract

The use of a mobile phone is almost an essential activity for seven billion individuals in the world who currently own these devices. With an average daily usage time of seven hours there is a risk for mobile phone addiction with individuals having a persistent desire and craving to use mobile phones which causes social and functional impairment. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to find a correlation between excessive smartphone usage and neck pain among university students in the European University of Tirana. Methodology: This is a cross sectional study. The study was conducted during a period of 1 month, from January 2023 till February 2023 and the data was collected from the third-year students of the Bachelor programs in the European University of Tirana. The subjects were selected based on their response to participating in the study and 138 participants (n=138) volunteered to participate. Results: A weak correlation between phone time and neck pain was found with a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.073, this correlation was not significant (sig value 0.197). Although there was a significant correlation (sig 0.001) between neck flexion angel and neck pain with a Pearson correlation value of 0.303. Non parametric test analysis showed that we have differences on neck pain value across the two groups with female students experiencing higher level of pain than male students. Conclusions: As we are advancing towards digitalizing most of our daily activities smartphones have become an extended part of human beings. Regular neck posture correction and advice on how to properly position the neck while using smartphones should be taken into account. Keywords: Smartphones, pain, neck pain, back pain, students.