The Relationship Between Smartphone Addiction and Neck Pain Prevalence among Older Population: A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: After pandemics of covid 19, world interaction has been more through social media and through virtual. With lots of benefit of the technology, there is a pitfall of this also. Because of this, usage of smart phone has increased so addiction of it occurs even in elderly population. Due to their posture of using smart phone, and its addiction, there may be chances of having additional neck pain and disabilities. So, here is the need to see whether their smart phone addiction has any role in their neck pain prevalence.

Methodology: The study examined 90 elderly population from Ahmedabad by random table sampling, in the age group of 60-70 years. Participants were asked to fill a Performa with the questionnaires of smart phone addiction scale (SAS) and neck disability index (NDI). Level of significant was kept at 5%. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to correlate between both SAS and NDI.

Result: From 90 participants, there was 36 females and 54 males. Mean±SD of SAS and NDI was 107.8±22.5 and 7.4±4.99 respectively. Spearman correlation coefficient showed a significant Moderate positive correlation between SAS and NDI (r=0.649, p<0.001).

Conclusion: The study showed the positive correlation between smartphone addiction and musculoskeletal problems in neck in elderly population.