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Science

Horns Are Growing on Young People's Skulls. Phone Use is To Blame, Research Suggests (washingtonpost.com) 139

Posted by msmash from the what-in-the-world dept.
What we have not yet grasped is the way the tiny machines in front of us are remolding our skeletons, possibly altering not just the behaviors we exhibit but the bodies we inhabit. From a report: New research in biomechanics suggests that young people are developing hornlike spikes at the back of their skulls -- bone spurs caused by the forward tilt of the head, which shifts weight from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head, causing bone growth in the connecting tendons and ligaments. The weight transfer that causes the buildup can be compared to the way the skin thickens into a callus as a response to pressure or abrasion.

The result is a hook or hornlike feature jutting out from the skull, just above the neck. In academic papers, a pair of researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, argues that the prevalence of the bone growth in younger adults points to shifting body posture brought about by the use of modern technology. They say smartphones and other handheld devices are contorting the human form, requiring users to bend their heads forward to make sense of what's happening on the miniature screens. Counter point: The absurd story about smartphones causing kids to sprout horns.
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Horns Are Growing on Young People's Skulls. Phone Use is To Blame, Research Suggests More

Horns Are Growing on Young People's Skulls. Phone Use is To Blame, Research Suggests

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  • Can't wait to hear Pat Robertson freak out. (Score:4, Funny)

    by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:28AM (#58799350)
    Chimpanzee man is going to totally lose his shit when he finds out about this.

  • Links Because the Summary Lacks (Score:5, Informative)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:28AM (#58799352) Homepage

    Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
    Research Paper: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by pgmrdlm ( 1642279 )
      Thanks for the link to the research paper. I was going to link a site that was not pay walled. But the actual research paper is way better then what I would have posted. Again, thanks

    • MOD UP (Score:1, Redundant)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

      More informative than my post, this one should be higher.

  • Not news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:29AM (#58799360)

    Young people have always been horny.

  • Tablet zombies (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinequonon ( 669533 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:30AM (#58799372)
    Starting to see more tablet zombies standing motionless in stores and blocking up foot traffic. To test if they are still alive, try sticking them in a Faraday cage.
  • So it only takes a generation to evolve...? Is this a "micro"-evolution? What happened to the billions of years it took to form life?

    • I can't tell if this is serious or not, and if it's not, I can't tell if it's a troll or sarcasm post.

      Well done. Regardless of intent, this is a perfect troll post.

    • Evolution happens when an adaptation gives a group from a species a specific advantage, and that group splits from the parent species. Highly unlikely that a bone spur at the base of the skull would give that segment of the species a competitive advantage and be something that people would select for in mating. This is more similar to warts than it is to evolution.

      • Re:Super Evolution Turbo: Alpha Edition EX (Score:4, Insightful)

        by lgw ( 121541 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @11:23AM (#58799734) Journal

        Evolution happens when an adaptation gives a group from a species a specific advantage, and that group splits from the parent species

        Evolution is the change over time in the statistical distribution of alleles within a species, and happens continuously. You're talking about speciation, I'd guess, but that's also a very gradual process.

    • So it only takes a generation to evolve...? Is this a "micro"-evolution? What happened to the billions of years it took to form life?

      Actually it's called De-Evolution.

    • Nature vs Nurture.

      They are a lot of physical and mental aspects of us, which are directed from the environment we live in and interact with. Back in elementary school, there was a set of identical twins, one needed glasses the other didn't. One was a little bigger and a noticeable difference in personalities. Then because of these differences how they interacted with the environment changed. Being the 1990's the twin with glasses, was automatically treated like the smarter one, Thus got better grades. Th

    • So it only takes a generation to evolve...? Is this a "micro"-evolution? What happened to the billions of years it took to form life?

      This is no more evolution than is body building. It is a reaction to the way you use your body. Not genetic change so not evolution.

  • Apparently, this is fake news to generate clicks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:34AM (#58799402) Homepage

    See here:

    https://reason.com/2019/06/20/... [reason.com]

    Original source:

    https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]

  • Twitter conversation on why this is garbage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:35AM (#58799404)

    The article is garbage click bait (which is probably why it's here on slashdot)

    Twitter discussion [twitter.com]

    And expanded upon here:
    Forbes article [forbes.com]

  • Fake News, cell phones not correlated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:35AM (#58799408)

    You knew that story had to be Fake News [reason.com]

    Also they are bone spurs, not "horns".

    How many kids do you know that actually hold a phone near the head anyway? They are all just texting in hand.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • > How many kids do you know that actually hold a phone near the head anyway? They are all just texting in hand.

      Surely that's the entire basis for the hypothesis - looking down to the phone in your hand results in the "repetitive and sustained mechanical load [that] is required for robust adaptation to take place in tendon properties".

      And yes it's just an hypothesis, an possible explanation for what they observed that makes some sense given previous research. Doesn't mean it is true of course, that's the

    • Also they are bone spurs, not "horns".

      Agreed, let's not rush to judgement here. Let's wait and see if these things change direction and pop out on the top of the head.

      If these kids start growing tails, and their feet morph into cloven hooves . . . then we should start worrying.

      • If these kids start growing tails, and their feet morph into cloven hooves . . . then we should start worrying.

        Pffft. If they start developing invisible telekinetic hands, insensate rages and begin tearing people rim from rim, THEN you start worrying.

        cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • How many kids do you know that actually hold a phone near the head anyway? They are all just texting in hand.

      To be fair the misguided articles cite a study which specifically say the kind of posture from hand holding is what could be responsible for these bone spurs.

  • Fake (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @10:38AM (#58799432)

    Researchers did not link any changes to mobile phones. That part is pure speculation based on nothing to troll you into paying attention:

    https://reason.com/2019/06/20/... [reason.com]

    News stories are not factual. As a rule, you shouldn't believe them any more than any other rumors you might hear.

  • Give me a break (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We've had books for how many hundreds of years? Who the hell reads with the book held in front of their face. We've also been crafting for tens of thousands of years. Few tasks require you to look straight ahead while crafting. What a pile of shit.

  • Today on Slashdot (Score:3)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt.gmail@com> on Friday June 21, 2019 @11:00AM (#58799598) Homepage

    aaand five minutes later on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/debunked-the-absurd-story-about-smartphones-causing-kids-to-sprout-horns/ [arstechnica.com]

    These were almost right next to each other in my RSS feed reader.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mcmonkey ( 96054 )

      One more reason I'm going to Ars more and more and /. less and less.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      From Ars Technica

      Last, it appears that the study’s lead author—David Shahar, a chiropractor and biomechanics researcher at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland—has a financial incentive to convince people that their modern lifestyles are deforming their skeletons

      Well that about wraps it up for that study,

  • Young people have always been horny...

  • They're not horns, they'te bome spurs

    Bone spurs predate cellphones , I hear they were around about the time of the Vietnam war (for those that were to dumb to get into the Air Narional Guard)

  • Within three generations, their descendants will be able to receive WiFi

  • Think of it as evolution in action!

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 21, 2019 @11:47AM (#58799906)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Most people that have worn glasses for an extended period of time have noticeable grooves in their skull where the sides of the glasses press against their head.

    • LOLZ no.

      There can be indentations in skin, and also calluses can form.

      but no, don't panic, it's not your skull.

      this article also is BS, centuries of reading books and newspapers and all manner of trade work would have done it too

  • So, holding phones distorts our bodies causing growth. Yeah, I believe that obvious bullshit.

    What about chairs? Do you think people were designed to sit in them? Why don't they put 'horns' on our butts? I sit more than I use a phone.

    Or clothing - why don't we have bone growths on our wrists where our clothing is no longer pressing on us? I wear my clothing more than I use a phone.

    This seems like an April Fools joke, not a real article. If there is anything to it, I bet it is a rare phenomena happenin

  • If the posture one assumes while using a cell phone caused bone spur growth, it would have happened already when people started reading books en masse.

    Headline from London Times, circa 1658: "Reading Novels Doth Induce Horns Upon Skulls of Youth!"

    Maybe we do need a micropayments system for news—as long as it includes a clawback feature. "This article was so much bullshit I want my micropayment back!"

    Ya know, now that I think about it, let's do this. Advertising is definitely the wrong financial mode

  • We'll all be wearing AR glasses soon enough.

  • Is this really a new thing?
    I have that bump on the back of my head (I'm 51) and have always understood it's Neanderthal morphology.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Although I have to admit that this study makes me wonder about that. I've been a heavy reader forever - was reading constantly more or less since age 3, and that head-tipped-forward pose is pretty much the same whether you're looking at a tablet, phone, or reading War and Peace.

    So should we tell kids not to read now?*

    *too late, they already aren

  • Something like 70% of scientific papers these days are just garbage, Dumb subject, fudged figures, misleading statistics and just plain lies. Probably rises to 95% in Medical studies.

    Couple'a years ago I bet my pals I could get any old crap published. I took a commonsense idea for positioning of patients during a particularly uncommon surgical procedure, Clare wrote it up, full of the most amazing references and bingo, there it was in the Eur*** Journal of ***** Surgery. We pissed ourselves laughing.

    Th

  • Now if the headline read

    Cellphones are making teens horny

    I might be more inclined to believe it.

  • I have lots of bone spurs, and I can attest that they are not all painless, and some of them interfere with normal body actions. So the counterpoint story is wrong in at least one way. This inspires me to suspect that it's wrong in other ways.

    Additionally, the original paper (not the post story) seems to be proposing both a reasonable mechanism, and a reasonable result. Possibly it didn't prove it, I didn't read the original paper, just a summary, but the "bone spurs on the neck" is a quite reasonable re

  • I agree with the vast majority of the Ars article, except for one point. Their issue with the statement of a 5x increase in men vs women not being supported by the graphical data is based on the assumption that the data in the figure is unnormalized to sex. That data looks normalized to me (sum of all male values is ~100% to my eye, and same for all female values). So the point of that plot is to demonstrate that the trend is the same for both genders, not that the prevalence is the same/different. What th

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