State of the art survey on effects of extensive usage of smartphone and methods to analyze muscular disorders

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In 2020, the number of smartphone users worldwide projected to reach 3.5 billion and in India alone 374.8 million smartphone users. Most of the young adults spend an average of 3 to 4 hours daily. The extensive usage of smartphone increases risk of disorders, including cervical, shoulder pain, etc. OBJECTIVE: The motivation behind the investigation is twofold: examine the effects caused by prolonged usage of smartphone through extensive literature survey and discuss the methods available to analyze the head posture, and neck-muscle fatigue. METHODS: Various database were investigated for literature and restricting to recent ten years (2010-2019). The chosen keywords for the research were a combination of smartphone, head flexion angle, neck muscle activity, neck pain, head posture, biomedical instrumentation, and sensor technologies. RESULTS: Posture of head, including flexion/extension angle while using smartphone, and text neck syndrome received lot of attention among international researchers. Not many studies were found in India, though our population is more vulnerable to health risk. CONCLUSION: Research on extensive usage of smartphone and associated occupational health risks lack in India. Comprehensive and systematic work is required to understand the relationship between musculoskeletal disorders, and smartphone usage.