Children are potentially causing harm to their necks and backs playing on smartphones, tablets and other smart devices for long periods of time.

Societal changes mean children are staying indoors more, due to parents being protective, which leads to more technology use. Instead of playing in the neighborhood, children are more attached to electronic devices.

“They’re in a generation that we didn’t have as children, where that’s just what they do all the time,” said Dr. Brandon Crouch, co-owner of Crouch Family Chiropractic. “So it’s a major issue that’s going to transpire as they get older.

“We’re going to see a lot more neck issues and back issues like we’ve never seen before because of this,” Crouch said. 

Dr. Jeremy McWhorter, owner of McWhorter Chiropractic, explains when society changes, so do the reasons behind injuries.

“Just like we’ve seen injuries in people sitting at their desk and people back in the day for manual labor, now we’ll start to see those effects from technology,” McWhorter said.

Children are increasingly more attached to their devices, which means they’re spending more time using bad posture, Crouch said.

“There’s numerous reasons why they’re just attached, and because of that most kids already don’t have a good posture,” Crouch said. “They’re looking down, they’re slumping down and that just combines with if they’re doing that a lot – which kids are these days – versus being outside.”

A little slouching may not seem like a big deal, but Crouch claims posture and movement of the body is the key to life.

“Well, posture directly affects your spine, and your spine is what houses the nervous system, your brain and the spinal cord,”  Crouch said. “So, when that’s affected, everything’s affected.”

According to Crouch, concerns and questions about children’s electronic device usage have increased.

Crouch clarifies how posture can have a huge impact not only on the nervous system, but the heart, oxygen and lungs. He describes the impact of posture on breathing.

“If your head’s forward, your shoulders go forward,” he said. “So, when you do that, you can’t take a good deep breath, it’s a shallow breath.

“So it directly affects your breathing and oxygen flow through the body.”

McWhorter agrees that posture is important to living a healthy life.

“Posture is really, really important,” McWhorter said. “The body will adapt to whatever repetitive posture we put it in over time.

“The biggest thing we see in our office is muscular skeletal issues, but especially, I think, the big ones that we see is neck pain, shoulder pain and headaches from technology related injury,” McWhorter said.

The worst case scenario of technology related injuries to the posture, neck and back is spinal disc herniation, degenerative disc disease and bone spurs over time. 

“Let’s talk about the neck for example, as that curve goes forward, you dramatically put a tremendous amount of pressure on the disc that’s at the front of the spine,” Crouch said. “So when you load those discs up with more pressure, the worst case scenario is as they get older they’re going to have more disc issues, disc herniations, which is going to lead to many more potential surgeries and life-altering types of health care.”

Dr. Chantelle Crouch, co-owner of Crouch Family Chiropractic, suggests different methods parents can use to help with children’s posture.  

“So at home, if they’re on the couch playing a game, I would put pillows to where literally their back is inclined and their head’s in a neutral position, but then they’re having to use more arm to hold it up and play the game,” Chantelle Crouch said. “Then we even sometimes … have them sit at the table and prop it up and play with it that way versus sitting in a chair.”

Having a phone held at eye level also helps.

There are several preventative methods that both children and adults can do to break the repetitive cycle of poor posture, which includes getting up out of the position every 20 to 30 minutes, along with doing stretches and exercises of the neck and shoulders.

It’s important that children start to practice these preventative methods while they’re young and for adults to monitor their children on smart devices.

“I use an analogy of a tree,” Brandon Crouch said. “You have a young tree that’s just been planted that’s growing sideways; you can tie that tree off to get it to grow straight.

“If you have a full, mature grown tree and it’s crooked, there’s not much you’re going to be able to do to correct that.”

— Follow faith/general assignments reporter Simone C. Payne on Twitter at twitter.com/_SimonePayne or visit bgdailynews.com.