Background: Smartphone has become a very popular necessity among students. An individual has to look at their phone's small monitor and perform repetitive movements in an awkward posture for a prolonged duration.
Objectives: To assess the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain and associated risk factors in university students because of smartphone usage.
Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 2000 university students using a semi-structured questionnaire comprising demographic profile, smartphone usage characteristics, presence of musculoskeletal pain, and specific area of pain according to the body region.
Results: Among the 2000 students, 44.05% reported musculoskeletal pain. The most common sites of pain were the neck (34.2%), thumb (17.45%), lower back (16.7%), and elbow (16.6%). There was an association between prevalence of musculoskeletal pain with the size of the smartphone (P = 0.005), the predominant purpose of smartphone usage (P = 0.002), position preferred while using smartphone (P = 0.000), and the level at which smartphone is held during usage (P = 0.05). Logistic regression analysis revealed that the strongest predictor of musculoskeletal pain was the size of the smartphone.
Conclusion: The study reported that the prevalence of pain in smartphone users is high with common sites being neck, thumb, and lower back region. Also, the size of the smartphone had a significant association with musculoskeletal pain.
Keywords: Pain; prevalence; risk; smartphone; students.
Copyright: © 2021 Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.