Text Neck Is Real: Round Rock's Tech Workers Are Suffering From It.

The term "text neck" sounds like something a wellness influencer invented. It is not. It's a clinically recognized syndrome with a growing body of research behind it, and researchers have described it as an emerging epidemic of musculoskeletal dysfunction directly tied to smartphone and screen use.¹

If you work in tech, commute on I-35, or spend meaningful time looking down at anything (a phone, a laptop on a low desk, a steering wheel), this is relevant to your spine.

What Text Neck Actually Is

Text neck is the clinical term for the cumulative strain on the cervical spine caused by prolonged forward head posture (FHP). When you look down at a phone, your head moves forward relative to your shoulders, and the effective weight your neck muscles must support increases dramatically.

Here's a useful approximation: at neutral (head directly over shoulders), your head exerts about 10–12 pounds of force on the cervical spine. At a 15-degree forward angle, that increases to roughly 27 pounds. At 45 degrees, which is how most people look at their phones, it's closer to 49 pounds. At 60 degrees, some estimates put it near 60 pounds.

Your neck was not designed to support 50+ pounds of load for hours every day. The muscles fatigue, the discs compress asymmetrically, and the cervical curve flattens over time.

The Research on Young Adults

A study published in the European Spine Journal specifically examined text neck and neck pain in 18–21-year-olds, people who grew up with smartphones. Researchers found a significant association between text neck posture and neck pain in this age group.² This is notable because it's a population that shouldn't have age-related cervical degeneration yet.

Among office workers, the picture is even clearer. A cohort study published in the Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy found that neck pain was significantly associated with smartphone overuse in office workers, with those using their phones most heavily at highest risk.³

What Text Neck Does to Your Cervical Spine Over Time

In the short term, text neck causes muscle fatigue and soreness, the kind of stiffness you feel after a long day at a screen. In the medium term, the paraspinal muscles (particularly the suboccipitals and upper trapezius) become chronically tight and overloaded, leading to persistent neck pain, headaches at the base of the skull, and reduced range of motion.

Over years, the structural consequences can be more serious: loss of the natural cervical lordosis (the inward curve of the neck), disc compression at the lower cervical levels (C5-C6 and C6-C7 are the most common sites), and premature degenerative changes in the facet joints.

This matters because once you lose cervical curvature, getting it back requires significant, sustained clinical intervention. It doesn't self-correct.

What To Do

The immediate behavioral changes are straightforward: raise your phone to eye level when you use it, adjust your monitor height so the top of the screen is at eye level, and take frequent movement breaks.

The clinical side is where a chiropractor comes in. If you've been living with forward head posture for years, you likely have:

• Restricted cervical joint segments that need specific adjustments to restore normal motion
• Chronically shortened anterior neck muscles that need soft-tissue release
• Weak deep neck flexors that need targeted rehabilitation
• Potentially altered cervical curvature that needs structural correction

Stretching alone isn't enough for structural FHP. The joint restrictions that develop over years need manual intervention to correct. That's exactly what we assess and treat. Our neck pain page explains the full process.

References

1. Tsantili AR, Chrysikos D, Troupis T. Text Neck Syndrome: Disentangling a New Epidemic. Acta Medica Academica. 2022;51(2):123–127. PMID: 36318004. DOI: 10.5644/ama2006-124.380.
2. Damasceno GM, Ferreira AS, Nogueira LAC, et al. Text neck and neck pain in 18–21-year-old young adults. European Spine Journal. 2018;27(6):1249–1254. PMID: 29306972. DOI: 10.1007/s00586-017-5444-5.
3. Szeto GPY, Tsang SMH, Ting ACW, Lee RYW. Neck pain associated with smartphone overuse: cross-sectional report of a cohort study among office workers. Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy. 2021;25(1):6–14. PMID: 33108531.