As more of us spending increasing amounts of time on our screens, tech neck has become a common and familiar concern - the poor posture caused by craning your head down to check your phone throughout the day.
But aside from posture, did you know that tech neck can change how your skin looks? Dr. Rosemary Coleman, Consultant Dermatologist, joined Today with Claire Byrne to talk about how more people are presenting with saggy necks from spending too long on their phones.
"We're actually checking our phones on average around 80 times a day, and that's the average person", she said.
Our heads, she noted, weigh on average around 5kg and is designed to be balanced on top of the spine. "When the head leans forward in the position you see everybody in permantantly nowadays, the force on the neck goes up to 27kg and that is the equivalent to having a six-year-old child sitting on the back of your neck."
Headaches, neck pain, back pain and more can all stem from this force being added to the neck, which are often the issues that bring people to their doctors complaining of tech neck.
When it comes to cosmetic issues, however, Coleman said that doctors are seeing "an extentuation of the horizontal lines" across the neck, which are called Venus lines, and at a younger age.
She added that some people are more likely to develop horizontal or vertical lines on their neck than others, particularly if they have a long neck. Neck skin, she said, is much thinner and more delicate than the skin on other parts of the body, so protecting the skin there is one way to treat tech neck.
"Use what you use on your face on your neck", Coleman said, adding that hydration is a key step in this process. She suggested using SPF on the neck and chest to stop it getting prematurely thinner.
Adding antioxidants like vitamin C or retinol can help, though she cautioned that "the neck won't always tolerate very heavy, greasy creams that the face might like, so it is trial and error".
Ultimately, however, she said that these horizontal lines cannot be removed as they are an "anatomical structure".
There are more invasive procedures, such as micro dots of Botox along the lines, that can be done to improve the appearance of the lines, but Coleman stressed that such procedures would have to be done very carefully by a trained professional as the neck is a delicate part of the body with important functions like swallowing and breathing.
"You can't fill the horizontal lines in the neck because you'd just end up with a roll like a snake. There's no real volume loss, it's just crepe-y and a thin crease", she said, but pointed to laser therapy, microneedling and more if such lines became upsetting for the person.
Perhaps more feasible, however, is trying to change the habit of looking down at your phone, Coleman said. "Pay attention to your seating in the office and all the dynamics there."
Listen back to the full interview above.
