<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
People spend so much time looking down at smartphones and tablets they are growing bony ‘spikes’ on the backs of their heads, scientists say.<\/p>\n
Researchers said growing numbers of people have growths called enlarged external occipital protuberances at the base of their skull.<\/p>\n
Considered rare when they were first discussed in the 1800s, we may now be able to feel the bony lumps with our fingers or see them on bald people.<\/p>\n
And younger people are developing them faster, with research showing the bumps are most common among 18 to 30-year-olds.<\/p>\n
Scientists at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, have done detailed research into the phenomenon.<\/p>\n
They scanned more than a thousand skulls belonging to people ranging in age from 18 to 86, BBC Future reports. The lead researcher, Dr David Shahar, told the BBC: ‘I have been a clinician for 20 years, and only in the last decade, increasingly I have been discovering that my patients have this growth on the skull.’<\/p>\n
Dr Shahar suggests the reason for the bony spike becoming more common is the amount of time people – particularly the young – spend looking down.<\/p>\n
On average the EOPs measured 2.6cm (1in), which the scientists said was ‘significantly larger’ than the average in 1996.<\/p>\n
The reason for this, they suggest, is a ‘hand held technological revolution’.<\/p>\n
According to research revealed last year, the average person in the UK spent 24 hours per week – about three-and-a-half per day – on their smartphones in 2017.<\/p>\n
On average, people check their phones every 12 minutes, disturbing stats from communications regulator Ofcom revealed. <\/p>\n
Some 78 per cent of Britons own a smartphone and one in five adults spend 40 hours or more online every week.<\/p>\n
Dr Shahar said that, although the bony lumps are unlikely to cause any damaging effects themselves, they may never go away.<\/p>\n
He added: ‘Imagine if you have stalactites and stalagmites, if no one is bothering them, they will just keep growing’.<\/p>\n
(Sam Blanchard <\/p>\n
senior health reporter <\/p>\n
for Mailonline)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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