Study: Texting-While-Slouching Is Causing an ‘iPosture’ Epidemic

So THAT'S why your back hurts

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If you have bad, caveman-like posture to begin with, your smartphone — plus all that time you spend hunched over your laptop looking at Facebook photos — could be making it worse.

According to a survey of 3,000 adults by SimplyHealth, a major UK health cash plan provider, 84 percent of 18-24 year olds claim to have suffered from some kind of back pain in the last year. This “iPosture” generation of young adults has lost an average of 1.5 days of work due to back problems compared to people of their parents’ generation — an “average of 6.74 days for 18-24 year olds versus 5.12 for 45 to 54 year olds,” to be precise.

The survey is clearly PR for SimplyHealths’s app, which provides remedies and exercises for back pain sufferers, but the catchy term ‘iPosture’ going viral is a good excuse to remind people of the health effects of bad posture, like fatigue, because your muscles have to work harder to keep you upright. Not to mention putting down the phone altogether will make you feel more rested, as another buzzy study this week suggested frequent texting may be linked to sleep deprivation and “interpersonal stress” among college freshmen. Everything in moderation, people.