Continuously hooked on to smartphones, gadgets for long hours has become one of the troublesome issues affecting billions of people across the globe but its high time that we reform ourselves.
The mobile technology has transformed the way we live today, how we read, work, communicate, shop and date, but we already know this what we don’t know was the way these tiny monsters are changing us.
Yes, these tiny monsters are remolding our skeletons, altering our bodies as well as our behavior, The Washington post reports.
New research in biomechanics suggests that young people are developing hornlike spikes at the back of their skulls caused by the forward tilt of the head.
The forward tilt shifts the weight from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head, causing bone growth in the connecting tendons and ligaments resulting in hook or horn like feature developing just above the neck.
This development can be compared to the way our skin thickens into a callus as a response to pressure or abrasion.
The researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia have argued that this bone growth in younger adults is due to shift in their body posture which suggests this as the skeletal adaptation to the penetration of advanced technology into everyday life.
“An important question is what the future holds for the young adult populations in our study when development of a degenerative process is evident in such an early stage of their lives?” asked the researchers in their most recent paper, published in Nature Research’s Scientific Reports.
These unusual bone formations is now dubbed as the “head horns,” “phone bones,” “spikes”, or “weird bumps.”
These unusual formations look like a bird’s beak, a horn, a hook which is a sign of serious deformity in posture causing chronic headaches and pain in the upper back and neck.
The danger is not the head horn itself, said Mark Sayers, an associate professor of biomechanics at Sunshine Coast.
The research began three years ago with a pile of neck X-rays taken in Queensland which showed bony projections, called enthesophytes, form at the back of the head.