Why 24% of Gen Z workers complained of neck and back pain: study

Give us a break.

Gen Z is calling out of work for the same aches and pains as their elders — but at surprisingly higher rates.

In a new poll, for the Daly Mail, 24% of workers aged 16 to 26 said they used neck or back pain as an excuse to take time off work this year, while only 14% of those aged 59 and over up, known as the Baby Boomers, did. the same. Meanwhile, the millennial group, aged 27 to 42, fell between them at 18% while only 12% of Gen Xers, aged 43 to 58, cited the same pain.

The survey of 2,000 people was conducted by biotech company Alvica Medical.

Said their CEO, Victoria Fransen, “They are the most affected when it comes to doing their jobs and there is certainly a correlation between that and them being the first true generation of digital natives.”

Of all ages combined, 63% reported having back and neck pain in the past 12 months.

Doctors have previously warned younger generations about the dangerous threat of so-called “tech neck”, a curvature of the upper spine due to years of poor posture – looking down at smartphones and tablets for hours a day.

Chiropractor Jake Boyle, @desmoineschiro on TikTok, recently shared alarming X-ray images of young people with crooked necks he’s seen in his practice in Iowa.

“If you are under 35, you should pay attention to this. We are all turning into crooked old people and there is a reason behind that,” he said.

Boyle’s examples of lumpy enlargers coincided with evidence of skeletal “horns” growing from the base of some young men’s skulls, which has also been said to be the result of cell phone use.

The strange phenomenon is called external occipital protuberance. First noted in 1885 by French scientist Paul Broca, the condition was so rare that it has been almost entirely overlooked until now.

David Shahur, a biomechanics researcher and clinician at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, told the BBC in 2019 that “only in the last decade” has he seen patients with this deformity.

Shahur, whose work on external occipital protuberances has previously been published in the Journal of Anatomy, hypothesized that the common bent-neck posture held by mobile device users may put extra pressure on the point where the neck muscles meet the skull. .

“Imagine if you have stalactites and stalagmites, if nobody is disturbing them, they will just keep growing,” he warned.