Do you often have recurring neck pain or tension in your neck and shoulders? You might be dealing with tech neck, a common issue today.
Tech neck results from bad posture and frequent use of devices like phones and computers, causing neck and shoulder pain, headaches, and potential spinal issues.
This condition can disrupt daily life, leading to soreness, long-term problems like osteoarthritis, nerve damage, and even breathing difficulties.
Our article offers insights into the causes and symptoms of tech neck, effective treatments, and practical solutions to correct it.
What is Tech Neck?
Technology neck, also known as tech neck, stresses your neck muscles due to spending too much time on your mobile device with your head bent forward. The tech neck state can manifest as pain in your neck and shoulders.
People also call this condition “text neck” because it has a strong association with mobile texting when holding your phone with your head bent over it. But these are just two factors leading to the ”text neck” state.
Signs of Technology Neck
Recognizing the early signs of tech neck is crucial for prevention and treatment:
- Stiff Neck: Initial stiffness and limited head movement, hindering free neck mobility.
- Shoulder Pain: Pain spreading to shoulder blades, muscles, tendons, and ligaments around the spine.
- Muscle Tightness: Tightening of neck muscles due to prolonged poor posture, causing discomfort.
- Chest Strain: Strain on chest muscles resulting from the head being consistently bent forward.
Most Common Tech Neck Causes
Many people do not pay enough attention to their posture while looking at their computer screens or scrolling through their mobile phones. To help you avoid chronic neck pain, we’ll discuss some of the most common causes:
- Posture and Spine Alignment: Tilting your head forward disrupts spine alignment, causing curvature and putting extra pressure on neck muscles.
- Muscles, Ligaments, and Tendons: These structures maintain neck and shoulder mobility, but angling the head forward increases stress on them.
- Repetitive Stress Injuries: Constant forward head positioning strains neck muscles, leading to injuries in the neck, shoulders, and back.
- Forward Head Posture: Leaning forward increases the pressure on neck muscles, causing them to stretch and become stiff due to the head’s weight.
- Prolonged Screen Time: Extended use of tech devices without breaks overworks neck muscles, causing pain.
- Ergonomics: Long sitting or improper screen viewing angles strain neck muscles; reclining chairs can help alleviate this.
Tech Neck Symptoms
Usually, early symptoms include neck pain, stiffness, soreness, and a narrow range of movement in the neck area. Other symptoms may involve headaches, numbness in the hands and arms, and shoulder pain as the condition progresses. Also, nerve damage may occur in the left and right arm.
These are the most frequent symptoms:
- Neck Pain – You may feel dull and constant or sharp pain. The pain can reflect from a particular spot in the neck and then spread to your back, chest muscles, and arms.
- Stiff Neck – You have limited movements when you have a stiff neck. You cannot fully move your head up, down, and side to side.
- Soreness – Difficulty twisting your neck and possible nerve compression. The soreness may lead to numbing and tingling in your arms and hands.
11 Tech Neck Treatment Tips
Consulting with medical professionals will determine the treatment suitable for your condition. In the meantime, you’ll have to work on improving your posture. By holding a proper posture, you can get rid of the computer face created by leaning your head toward the laptop for prolonged periods.
You can practice exercises to improve your posture. The exercises will help you eliminate some issues that arise from holding your head forward for a more extended period. One issue that emerges from poor head posture is getting a double chin, which you can treat with chin-tucking exercises.
After you start doing the basics to avoid tech neck, you can check out these tech neck solutions:
1. Perform neck stretches daily
You can do several exercises to stretch your neck and shoulder blades that will help you with the pain:
- You can sit or stand up straight, lean your head to one side, gently pull and hold for 20 seconds. Then lean your head to the other side and hold for 20 seconds. This exercise will assist you in releasing the tension.
- Lie on your stomach and place your head facing the floor. Place your arms slightly apart from your hips. Keep your neck straight and slowly lift your arms. Try to keep the knees off the floor. Hold the position for about 2-3 seconds and do three sets with ten reps.
2. Engage in physical therapy sessions
Physical therapy can significantly improve your posture and help you relieve the pain. You can consult a physical therapist for the proper therapy and the best possible results. Also, physical therapy may include tech breaks, special assisting devices, regular exercise, etc.
3. Consult a chiropractor for care
You can fix tech neck problems by seeing a certified chiropractor. Chiropractors are trained to correct misalignments of the spine. Chiropractic care can ease the pain, enhance spinal alignment, and eliminate the tech neck’s effects on the body.
4. Schedule regular massage therapy
Many people choose massage therapy to relieve muscle tension and relax and ease the pain caused by tech neck. A lot of massage therapists use the Myofascial Release (MFR) approach, which involves active stretching and light massage or pressure on the area affected by the tech neck.
5. Try acupuncture treatments
Acupuncture may correct tech neck by placing acupuncture needles on the affected area. After the acupuncture points are set, they reduce the inflammation and disparity in your soft tissue.
6. Practice mewing techniques
Mewing 101 is a natural method that reinforces good tongue posture and prevents tech neck pain. Another great benefit of mewing is that it can exercise your neck muscles. Since jaw muscle pain can also be a symptom of a text neck, mewing can help you exercise your jaw muscles and fix receding jawline.
Take a quick quiz to receive a workout program to improve your jaw, facial muscles and overall appearance.
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7. Focus on a nutritious diet
Taking supplements will help you reduce inflammation in the affected area. You can take minerals like magnesium and methyl sulfonyl methane to decrease pain. Also, black spices like black pepper and turmeric are known for their anti-inflammatory features. Finally, collagen will relieve the pressure from tendons and ligaments, which are affected by the tech neck.
8. Increase water intake
It is recommended to drink water regularly. However, regarding tech neck, good hydration with a minimum of 1.2 liters is essential to prevent cervical disc degeneration.
9. Ensure quality sleep
You must avoid sleeping on your stomach when you have neck and back pain. You must sleep on your side and with a pillow under your knees.
10. Manage stress effectively
You can combine multiple neck pain release methods to decrease the stress in your neck and shoulder muscles. Or you can combine more techniques to get better results.
11. Apply relaxation techniques
Other relaxation techniques that will help with your neck issue is placing a heating pad on your stiff area, having a nice warm shower, practice yoga and meditation. And do not forget to exercise regularly and keep your chin in a natural position.
Relax Your Shoulders and Fix the Tech Neck
Having problems with tech neck is a common issue with anyone who spends a lot of time on their mobile device, laptop, PC, tablet, etc. Due to our way of life, we constantly forget to care for our bodies properly. Body awareness must take priority, and we must change our bad habits when treating tech neck and for a better and healthier life.
Therefore, regular training, good hydration, proper posture, and limited screen time must be our everyday precedence. That is how we will avoid acute cervix, chest, and thoracic spine pain and permanent damage to our nervous system – it’s the tech neck cure!
