If you’ve ever been walking down the street, staring at a text message on your phone, and walked headfirst into a lamp post . . . well, you’re DEFINITELY not the only one.
There’s a new report in a medical journal about a STEEP rise in head and neck injuries in the past 20 years.
And the doctors behind it say it’s a DIRECT result of people tripping, falling, and slamming into things when they were distracted by their phone.
An estimated 76,000 people in the U.S. between January of 1998 and December of 2017 hurt themselves so badly while they were distracted that they had to go to the hospital.
And the rate of those injuries went way up after 2007, when the smartphone revolution really started kicking in.
Most of the injuries are pretty mild, but there have been some people who’ve wound up with traumatic brain injuries. There were also people who had broken noses because they were in bed, looking at their phone, and dropped it on their face.
The doctors say the study is a good reminder to, quote, “Be self-aware. Answer a text message, fine, but you shouldn’t be walking around reading articles on your phone.”
Not to mention the emotional stress you deal with when your screen cracks because you looked at it the wrong way.
(NBC News)
