Where this summary comes from
Chen YJ, Hu CY, Wu WT, Lee RP, Peng CH, Yao TK, Chang CM, Chen HW, Yeh KT. Association of smartphone overuse and neck pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 2025. PMID 39764644.
The paper itself — doi.org/10.1093/postmj/qgae200
Study design: Systematic review and meta-analysis · 7 retrospective studies · 10,715 participants
What the paper asked
Is heavy smartphone use associated with neck pain, and if so by how much?
What was found
- People who overused a smartphone had a 2.34-fold odds of neck pain (95% CI 1.44 to 3.82).
- The confidence interval sits entirely above 1, so the association holds statistically — though the range is wide.
- Mean participant ages ran from 19.9 to 42.9 years, so this is a finding about adults, not children.
What does not follow from it
- ⚠️ All seven studies are retrospective. This cannot say the phone caused the pain, only that the two travel together. Someone whose neck hurts may also sit more and use a phone more.
- "Overuse" is defined differently in each study — hours per day, an addiction questionnaire score, or self-report. So "how much is too much?" has no numeric answer here.
- The review is about pain, not about neck angle. None of these studies measured how much head posture changed.
What it means for someone here
This is the question asked most often in the clinic, and the honest answer has two halves: the association is real and not small, but this paper cannot show the phone caused it. So a programme written here is not built on "put the phone down" — it is built on what was measured: the craniovertebral angle, the range of movement, and when the pain actually arrives.
Related findings
This page summarises one study. It is not treatment advice, and no programme is written for a person from a single paper.