Spending time in front of a computer monitor and a TV screen causes back pain and recurrent headaches in teenagers, Norwegian researchers report in the BMC Public Health journal.
Torbjoern Torsheim from the University of Bergen and an international group of scientists investigated the relationship of screen time with back and head pain in 30 teenagers.
More and more young people complain of back, neck, shoulder and head pain. At the same time, teenagers spend more and more time in activities that require sitting in front of the screen – watching TV and using the computer, the authors of the study emphasize.
Researchers observed a relationship between the amount of time spent in front of a monitor or a screen with adolescents’ complaints – the type of activity did not play a role, except for a group of girls whose headaches were related to watching TV and using the computer, but not playing computer games.
According to the authors of the research, the main influence on pain in adolescents is the time and position in which children sit in front of the screen (PAP).