How Your Smartphone Is Changing Your Body

Using your smartphone could be doing more harm to your body than you may be aware of. We're not talking about doomscrolling or the adverse effects social media has on your mental health. No, this is how using your smartphone may actually be damaging your body the more you use it and look at it.

There are several ways that using your smartphone can lead to physical changes and pains. Doctors have come up with a new term that has to do with how people use their smartphones and the physical toll it takes on doing so. "Phone body" is an informal phrase coined by doctors describing the physical changes in bodies that come after years of hunching, bending, and slouching to look at a smartphone. Per a 2025 report from Harmony Healthcare IT, Americans spend an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes per day using their phone. It's no wonder people are experiencing aches and pains all over their body.

These ailments can be related to pain in your neck, shoulders, thumbs, eyes, back, and elbows. They are just a few of a number of everyday smartphone risks you should know about. Most of the pain can be reduced; however, it falls on the user to understand how they are utilizing their phone and what they can do to avoid or prevent it.

As people use smartphones regularly, they can develop habits that can lead to pain over time, such as holding the phone in your hand and looking down at it with your neck tilted at a certain angle. There is also the amount of strain that screens can put on the eyes.

You may have heard of text neck syndrome, which has to do with your posture while looking at your phone. It involves you looking down at your phone for lengthy periods of time that put strain on your spine. It's just one aspect that can lead to phone body, and can leave you with pain in the neck. Hunching while using your phone can also put up to 50 pounds of pressure on your spine. Doctors say it can become a problem if done repeatedly and over the course of several years.

Eye strain is another cause of looking at a smartphone too long; however, it's not quite that simple. A 2015 study in JAMA Ophthalmology found that it may actually be a lack of being outside that is causing issues related to nearsightedness. Fortunately, doctors say that spending two hours outside a day can help protect against developing nearsightedness-related issues. The act of putting your smartphone down and doing something else has been linked to improving your mood and can help reduce pain.

Doctors say that smartphones can be bad for posture due to people forgetting to maintain how they sit and carry themselves. You may be able to adjust a computer monitor or sit upright in a chair, but you can use a phone in all sorts of various positions, such as leaning on a table, staring down at it, or holding it above your face while you sleep. 

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to alleviate and prevent body pains when using your smartphone. First, it is recommended to hold the smartphone at eye level or higher. This allows your neck to look up instead of down where it can be strained. Massaging your neck and back with a roller or massage can reduce pain as well. Doing various exercises can also help in reducing smartphone-related body aches and leave you feeling better. You can try the chin tuck exercise, for example, which can help with the pains developed from tech neck.

Ultimately, spending less time on your smartphone can prevent the effects of phone body. Instead of spending hours on end doomscrolling, putting the phone away and doing another activity may be a good idea. If you struggle with using your smartphone too much, there are a few gadgets that can help slow your smartphone addiction.