Tech

The Physical Cost of Spending Hours on Your Smartphone

Published

2 hours ago

August 10, 2026

Your smartphone doesn’t need to break your concentration to affect your body… it may only need you to keep holding it.

Smartphones have turned hours of looking down, gripping a small device, and repeatedly moving a thumb into ordinary daily behavior, and researchers are finding measurable physical consequences. Prolonged phone use has been associated with neck and upper-body discomfort, while repetitive hand movements can place additional stress on the fingers, thumbs, and wrists.

The science, however, does not justify blaming smartphones for every modern physical problem.

Neck strain and posture have stronger evidence behind them, while claims involving spinal degeneration and grip strength need to be separated from what the research can actually establish.

The cost of always looking down

Using a smartphone typically means looking down at a relatively small screen. That pushes the head forward and increases the work required of the muscles around the neck and shoulders to maintain that position.

A study on smartphone use and cervical spine stability found that maintaining a roughly 30-degree forward head tilt while using a smartphone for 30 minutes caused mild to moderate neck and upper-body discomfort but did not significantly change measures of cervical spine stability.

That helps explain why prolonged phone use can cause neck and shoulder discomfort.

It also provides some of the evidence behind the “phone body” concerns that spine surgeon K. Daniel Riew raised in an Inc. article. Riew argues that repeatedly placing the cervical spine under this kind of load could contribute to longer-term disc problems.

The research supports the change in posture and muscle activity, but it does not establish that smartphone use directly causes cervical degeneration. Neck discomfort during prolonged phone use is not the same thing as evidence of permanent spinal damage.

Your hands feel it too

For many, the side effects of using a smartphone mean shorter attention span, addiction, less sleep, and, as noted above, neck pain. The neck, however, is not the only part of the body working harder during prolonged smartphone use.

While the head remains tilted toward the screen, the hand holding the device may be supporting it for extended periods. The thumb and fingers are also repeatedly tapping, swiping, and typing.

Here, the evidence points more clearly toward pain and repetitive strain than permanent changes in hand strength.

A 2026 systematic review of smartphone use and hand pain found an association between smartphone use and hand pain.

But studies looking specifically at grip strength have produced less consistent results. An observational study of smartphone screen time and grip strength found a weak association between longer daily smartphone use and weaker grip strength, while a SCAMP study of mobile phone use and grip strength found no negative effect.

So the stronger claim is not that smartphones are permanently weakening people’s hands. It is that repeated smartphone use can place physical demands on the hand, and research has found an association with pain.

That distinction becomes important as more of everyday work, communication and entertainment moves onto a device people may hold for hours at a time.

What the research does and doesn’t show

Riew argues that the human body wasn’t evolved for phone use, let alone extended phone use.

That does not mean every physical change associated with smartphones is permanent, or that the device itself is uniquely harmful. It does, however, raise a more useful question: how much of the strain comes from the phone itself, and how much comes from the way we have incorporated it into everyday life?

None of these suggest we should dump our phones outright. For most people, phones have become an indispensable part of their lives, and in some cases, a revenue-generating asset.

The issue is not necessarily that a smartphone changes the human body simply because we use it. It is that a device designed to sit in our hands and demand our visual attention can also encourage us to remain in the same position for much longer than the body would otherwise require.

Also read: Questions about compulsive screen use are also playing out in court after Meta avoided a landmark social media addiction trial when the remaining claim was dropped days before proceedings.

Tech

Social media platforms still facing thousands of user addiction lawsuits after failed appeals

Published

18 minutes ago

August 10, 2026

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Social media companies like Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google are facing a long road of litigation over claims that they intentionally designed their products to be addictive to minors.

According to a report from Reuters, San Francisco’s 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied these platforms’ attempt to defend themselves from thousands of lawsuits through an argument based on Section 230, which protects publishers and platforms from being held liable for users’ posts. The companies argued that Section 230 could also protect them from the claim that they did not warn the public about addictive design choices, but the court said the appeal may have come too soon, since this type of appeal usually arrives after a trial.

These thousands of lawsuits, which come from private individuals, state and local governments, and school districts, were consolidated into one federal suit and will proceed as such.

It’s too early to say how these addictive design lawsuits will pan out, but so far, Meta lost two lawsuits over similar issues, marking the first time that the platform was held liable over child safety concerns in jury trials.

Tech

Aptoide becomes the first rival app store to return to Google Play in the US

Published

26 minutes ago

August 10, 2026

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Competing Android app stores are now back on Google Play in the U.S., and Aptoide is the first to take advantage of the new option. On Monday, the Portugal-based app distributor brought its games store back to Google Play after more than a decade, crediting the loosening of restrictions that had been criticized as anticompetitive.

For the first time in many years, U.S. users will be able to install a competitor to Google’s Android app store directly from Google Play itself, a milestone in terms of opening the app market to more competition.

Aptoide’s independent app store is one of the larger Android app marketplaces outside of Google Play, offering more than 40,000 Android applications to its roughly 25 million monthly active users. The U.S. has been Aptoide’s largest market to date, but until now, the store had to be sideloaded on Android devices, limiting its reach.

That changed following U.S. District Judge James Donato’s ruling in the Epic Games lawsuit, which, among other things, now requires Google to allow the installation of third-party apps from outside the Play Store. As of June 22, 2026, Google began allowing third-party app stores to access Google Play’s app catalog through the Play Catalog Access Program. This allows competitors to access Google Play infrastructure, including its catalog of apps that can be offered to users, while remaining an independent store.

Epic Games first sued Google in 2020, alleging anticompetitive abuses in the Android app ecosystem. A jury trial ruled in Epic’s favor in 2023. Google appealed the ruling, but lost. Earlier this year, the comapny said it would drop Play Store commissions and make it easier for Android users to install alternative app stores.

Tech

YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money

Published

33 minutes ago

August 10, 2026

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YouTube announced on Monday that new creators will have to meet higher thresholds to begin earning money from ads and subscriptions.

Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. Currently, creators need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over the past 90 days.

The change is going into effect starting February 1. The Google-owned company says the update won’t impact creators already in the YouTube Partner Program.

Additionally, YouTube announced that creators will need to maintain 10 million Shorts views over a 90-day period to earn money through the Shorts Creators Pool. Channels below this threshold will remain in the partner program and continue earning on long-form content, with Shorts revenue resuming once they cross 10 million views again.

YouTube says the changes are being introduced to “keep pace with the growth of YouTube, which now sees over 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of watch time on TV” every day.

The changes make it harder for creators to enter and remain in YouTube’s monetization program, especially for Shorts creators. By increasing thresholds, YouTube is putting more pressure on creators’ ability to consistently bring in large audiences before being able to earn money on the platform, which could in turn lead to fewer new entrants being able to monetize their content.

As part of Monday’s announcement, YouTube announced that it’s expanding its more affordable Premium Lite subscription to all countries where YouTube Premium is available. Creators receive a share of subscription revenue based on member watch time and views, with 55% going to long-form video creators and 45% to Shorts creators.

“With these additional subscribers, creators can expect higher earnings: when a user signs up for Premium, partners, on average, earn more than when the user was watching ads,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Premium Lite offers an ad-free experience on most videos, along with the ability to download videos for offline viewing and play videos in the background.

YouTube isn’t the only social media company revising its creator rewards programs. Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X also revamped creator payouts by changing its guidelines to only reward original content. Earlier this spring, Facebook also launched a new monetization program to attract creators from TikTok and YouTube.

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