Too much playing with cellphones can actually have a bad impact on "children" or teenagers. According to research, playing cellphones for more than 3 hours per day can make teenagers experience back pain.
A study by Brazilian researchers reported in the scientific journal Healthcare, identified several risk factors for thoracic spine disease (TSP) or back pain among adolescents.
Specifically the thoracic spine which is located at the back of the chest, mostly between the shoulder blades, and extends from the bottom of the neck to the start of the lumbar spine.
The data analyzed came from a survey of male and female students aged 14 to 18 in the first and second years of high school in Bauru, a city in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo.
quoted Telset from Gadgets 360 on Monday (10/04/2023), the initial questionnaire was completed in March to June 2017 by 1,628 participantes and in 2018 with 1,393 participants.
The result is that there are several factors that cause back pain among adolescents such as looking at cellphone screens for more than 3 hours a day, eyes that are too close to the screen and playing cellphones in a sitting or lying position on their stomach.
In addition, there were 38.4% of participants who had back pain or TSP at the basic level and follow-up, and 10.1% follow-up. Then there are more female adolescents with this disease than males.
The negative impact of back pain makes adolescents become inactive, perform less academically, and have more psychosocial problems.
Even though this study was conducted in 2017, researchers assess that this study is still relevant today. This is because the increasing use of smartphones and other gadgets during the Covid-19 pandemic has clearly made the risk of back pain among adolescents even worse.
Even the world health organization, or WHO, is starting to highlight the negative impact of playing smartphones on the back health of adolescents, because WHO is currently making a recent global review regarding this case.