'Turtleneck syndrome'

By Park Moo-jong

"Who do you think will be one of the most popular medical specialists in the coming decades and who is losing popularity?" A retired prominent heart surgeon and a friend of mine asked one day jokingly.

I figured out at once what he meant. "Orthopedic surgeons specializing in spinal diseases and ENT doctors, especially ear specialists."

"Right, you got it." He was going to explain about the social and medical problems of the increasing smartphone addiction, colloquially known as "nomophobia" (no-mobile-phone phobia), fear of being without a mobile phone. The Korean term for this is "menbung," an English-Korean compound word of "men" from mental and "bung" from "bunggwoe" or collapse, namely meaning mental collapse.

Of late, the so-called "turtleneck syndrome" has made the headlines of lots of news outlets, accompanied by medical warnings against the new disease of forward neck posture, the official medical term, which is when a cellphone addict's head tips forward and remains fixed.

Doctor Kim Sang-hyuk, the director of a spine center in Seoul, warned in his special Korea Times column as many as five years ago: "The most common symptom (of turtleneck syndrome) is muscular pain and frequent tiredness in the affected area.

"Forward neck posture results in frequent fatigue of the shoulders and neck, or pain in the back and shoulders. When such pain arises and remains untreated for a long time, it may result in headaches, blurred eyesight or dry eyes. Furthermore, this syndrome may result in decreased concentration and memory, and could be misinterpreted in the elderly as dementia."

A group of four coeds took a table at a Seoul restaurant. After placing their orders, they immediately took out their respective smartphones and bowed their heads down towards them, busily prodding the screens. They were quite different from the female students of the early 2000s who would be busy chatting with each other in a similar situation.

How about family dining? The virtue of eating together after a long day is conversation among family members. Such a familiar scene has already disappeared at most family dining tables.

Few, including myself, would be able to insist they are not addicted to smartphones. In particular, most young people look to be desperate to use these tools in any space. Anyone can confirm easily the "serious" trend in the subway train after commuting hours.

On Wednesday, I took the subway, Line 4, to go to Dobong Driver's License Exam Office to renew my license at 8:30 a.m. There were around 50 passengers, more than half of whom were students, in the car, all seated, except me. I watched them for about 20 minutes until I arrived at my destination.

Three women were putting on makeup without caring about the glances of others at all. Four middle-aged people were dozing. Five in the seats reserved for the elderly were doing nothing. And the rest, mostly young people, were bowing their heads to see the smartphones in their hands, probably enjoying games or reading the news. Of course, their ears were plugged with listening devices.

A poet describes the scene well in his poem, "Surprised at Seoul Subway," quoted by Chosun Ilbo, a Korean newspaper, last week: "Medical doctors were sitting side by side on the subway train. All of them were wearing stethoscopes in their ears ... Young doctors without gowns on were, with two fingers, examining and diagnosing the world."

People can also meet so many cellphone addicts on the streets in broad daylight, namely "smombies," who are completely unaware of their surroundings with their necks bent like those of turtles toward their phones, while walking mindlessly like zombies. While crossing streets, they are unable to hear sounds from outside, in particular honking, alarming drivers.

At 95 percent, the Republic of Korea has undisputedly the highest smartphone penetration rate in the world. The number of turtleneck syndrome patients is sharply increasing. According to health authorities, more than 2.1 million people were diagnosed as patients of forward neck posture last year. But there must be much more patients, if all the smartphone users have a check-up.

Many countries are racking their brains over how to prevent accidents and diseases caused by smartphone addicts, particularly the smombies. For instance, the city of Honolulu bans pedestrians from looking at mobile phones or texting while crossing the street. Smombies can be fined between $15 and $130, depending on the number of times police catch them looking at a phone or tablet device as they cross the street.

Everybody knows the answer: Refrain from using smartphones or computers for more than one hour straight to prevent straight neck and turtleneck syndromes and take 10-minute breaks to ease shoulder and neck muscles. It's like teaching your grandma to suck an egg.

Certainly in less than 20 years' time, spinal surgeons and ENT doctors will be meeting their heydays and hearing aid makers will be also enjoying a flourishing business, if the current trend does not change without any remedies.

The smartphone is undeniable. But we must not ignore the ill effects. Let's look up to the blue sky from time to time while surfing on the screen, for the sake of our necks.

Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974.