Correlation of mobile phone usage on grip strength, disabilities and posture in young adults

Abstract

Background: The musculoskeletal issues are now common in excessive use of mobile phone for communication, gamming and socialization on internet. The excessive use of mobile phone may decrease the muscle strength and lead to poor posture ultimately functional impairment related to upper extremity. Objective: to determine correlation among duration of mobile phone usage, neck posture, disabilities and hand grip strength. Methods: A correlational cross sectional study was done at Riphah International University Lahore from March 2020 to February 2021. The target population was male and female young students of 18 to 24 years, used mobile phone more than 6 hours in a day. A total of n=400 subjectsarticipated in the study in which n=235 were females and n=165 were males. The information was gathered using the DASH Questionnaire to identify upper limb problems, the photogrammetry method to determine the cervical angle, and a dynamometer to determine the strength of each hand's grasp. The pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was done by using SPSS version 21. Result: The mean age of the study participant was 20.99±2.34 years. A total of n=165(41.25%) were male and remaining n=235 were female participated in the study. Increase use of mobile had negative significant small correlation with degree of cervical angle (p=0.04), right hand grip strength (p=0.01) and positive significant small correlation with DASH score (0.01). While no significant correlation between daily use of mobile phone and left hand grip strength Conclusion: The study concluded that as the duration of mobile phone usage increased, the forward head posture and disabilities of the upper limb also increased. But the grip strength of right hand decreased as the mobile phone duration is increased. Key words: Correlation, disabilities, female, grip strength, mobile phone, male, posture.