If you look around the world a little more closely, you'll see that the majority of people are walking and using their smartphones. A recent study found that a quarter of people crossing intersections are glued to a smartphone device.
“I don’t think people realize how much their attention is distracted and how much their situational awareness changes when they’re walking and using their smartphone,” said Wayne Giang, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Florida who has examined the relationship between phone use and walking injuries.
Indeed, our devices can cause what some experts call “inattentional blindness.” One study found that participants were half as likely to notice a clown on a unicycle – a cheeky touch – while walking and talking on the phone.
However, that screen in your hand doesn't just distract you. It also changes your mood, the way you walk, and your posture – and makes it harder for you to get from point A to point B without running into problems.
How a smartphone "breaks" your stride
According to Dr. Yang, when we walk and use our smartphones, we automatically adjust the way we move. Video footage of pedestrians has shown that people using their smartphones walk about 10% slower than others.
“You see a series of changes in gait that reflect the deceleration,” said Patrick Crowley, a project manager at the Technical University of Denmark, who has studied the biomechanics of walking while using a phone. “People take shorter steps and spend more time with both feet on the ground.”
Walking more slowly can have an impact on your fitness, says Elroy Aguiar, an associate professor of exercise at the University of Alabama.
Looking at your smartphone while walking can also increase the strain or force placed on the muscles of your neck and upper back, which can contribute to symptoms of “text neck.” Additionally, research published in the journal Gait & Posture suggests that all of this could reduce balance and increase the risk of trips or falls.
How it affects your mood
When scientists want to study stress, they often ask people to perform multiple tasks at once. This is because multitasking is a reliable way to induce stress in people.
There's evidence that walking while using a phone works this way, even if we don't realize it at the time. One experiment also found that it also increased their levels of cortisol, the so-called stress hormone
A 2023 study examined the psychological effects of walking in an outdoor park while looking at a phone — or not. “Generally, when people go for a walk, they feel better afterward, and that’s what we saw in the no-phone walking group,” said Elizabeth Broadbent, one of the study’s authors and a professor of health psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
"In the phone-using groups, these effects were reversed," he added. "Instead of feeling more positive after walking, people felt less positive – less excited, less happy, less relaxed.".
The study authors attribute these negative effects to a reduced connection to the environment – it’s now widely accepted that walking in nature is good for mental health. “It seems that to get these benefits, it’s important to have your attention on the environment and not on your phone,” he said. It’s also possible, he added, that walking and trying to use your phone is simply distracting, which explains why it can ruin your mood.
The dangers of abstract walking
Most of us understand that walking and using a cell phone can be dangerous.
Dr. Yang’s research examined the link between “abstract phone walking” and emergency room visits. Using government data from 2011 to 2019, he and his colleagues found nearly 30,000 phone walking injuries. While many of these accidents occurred on the streets and sidewalks, nearly a quarter occurred at home. The risk of tripping or falling down stairs is real, according to Dr. Yang.
Age was found to be one of the main risk factors for phone-related hiking injuries, the study found. Young people aged 11 to 20 had the highest rate of injuries, followed by adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s – perhaps because younger people use their phones more than older people, it said.
So how do you stay safe? If you want to check your phone, Dr. Yang recommends simply stopping for a moment while walking.
If you're walking and using your device at the same time, he recommends avoiding doing so when you're near stairs, crosswalks, and messy ground – environments where, according to his research, accidents are more likely to occur.
Source of information: nytimes.com
