Text neck

Text neck is the popular name for bending your neck forward to look down at a phone or tablet, sometimes also called tech neck. A 2023 review of 41 studies found that researchers define it in different ways, but posture is the common core: for research purposes, text neck is the habit of texting on a smartphone with the neck bent forward (Grasser et al., 2023).

Where does the idea of text neck come from?

The idea took off with a widely reported 2014 paper in Surgical Technology International, which set out to assess how the forces on the cervical spine increase as the head tilts further forward (Hansraj, 2014). What the paper did not do was study whether people who look down at their phones actually have more neck pain. That question needed different studies.

The definitions in use also tend to assume harm. Of the 41 studies in the 2023 review, more than half described the posture with words meaning “incorrect”, and some built tissue damage or symptoms into the definition itself (Grasser et al., 2023).

Does text neck cause neck pain?

When researchers assessed people’s neck posture while they texted and looked for a link with pain, they didn’t find one:

• Young adults. In 150 people aged 18 to 21, neck posture while texting, judged both by the participants and by physiotherapists, was not associated with neck pain or how often it occurred (Damasceno et al., 2018).
• Adults. In 582 people aged 18 to 65, the neck flexion angle while texting, measured with a device standing and sitting, was not associated with neck pain, how often it came, or how bad it got (Correia et al., 2021).
• Over time. In 457 adults without neck pain, the same research group measured the texting angle and followed people for a year. The angle did not raise the chance of developing neck pain. Poor sleep quality and too little physical activity did: poor sleep went with about 1.8 times the odds, and insufficient activity with about 2.4 times (Correia et al., 2025).

The scoping review reached a blunt conclusion: there is no scientific evidence linking text neck with neck pain, whatever definition is used (Grasser et al., 2023). There is a longer look at these studies in Is “text neck” real?

Common misunderstandings about text neck

“Looking down at my phone is damaging my spine”

That hasn’t been shown. The often-quoted load figures came from an assessment of forces, not from following people over time, and the one study that did follow people for a year found no link between the texting angle and new neck pain.

“So screen time doesn’t matter at all”

Not quite. The angle of the neck and the amount of time spent on screens are different things. A large review found cross-sectional links between computer time and neck and shoulder pain, though, as the authors note, data of that kind can’t show which came first (Dzakpasu et al., 2021). Long, unbroken sitting is covered under sedentary behaviour.

“Text neck is the same as forward head posture”

They overlap but aren’t the same. Text neck is about bending the neck down; forward head posture is about the head sitting ahead of the shoulders. In adults, forward head posture has been associated with neck pain on average, though not in adolescents (Mahmoud et al., 2019). Neither is the same as the curve of the neck, the cervical lordosis.

“Physiotherapists warn about it, so it must be true”

Many still use the idea. In a survey of Brazilian physiotherapists, most endorsed assessing and treating neck pain based on smartphone posture, 73% for acute neck pain (Arrigoni et al., 2026). The authors argued that this reflects outdated reasoning that conflicts with modern, biopsychosocial approaches to pain.

What does matter, then?

Based on the longitudinal study, sleep and overall physical activity are better bets than the angle of your phone. If your neck hurts after long screen days, see neck pain from desk work for the common causes and the NHS signs that mean a GP visit (NHS), and working on a laptop for the setup side.

Bavelu’s AirPods posture tracking notices when your head leans forward and lets you know, as a prompt to move rather than a verdict on your spine.