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Cell Phones Causing Young People to Grow Horns on Skulls- Research
Researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia have found evidence that our frequent use of mobile devices could be causing horn-like bone spurs to appear on younger adults.
New research in biomechanics suggested that mobile phones are remolding human skeletons, possibly altering not just the behaviours but the bodies we inhabit.
According to the research, 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.
The researchers said their discovery marks the first documentation of a physiological or skeletal adaptation to the penetration of advanced technology into everyday life.
Health experts warn of “text neck,” and doctors have begun treating “texting thumb,” which is not a clearly defined condition but bears resemblance to carpal tunnel syndrome. But prior research has not linked phone use to bone-deep changes in the body.
“An important question is what the future holds for the young adult populations in our study, when development of a degenerative process is evident in such an early stage of their lives?” ask the authors in their most recent paper, published in Nature Research’s peer-reviewed, open access Scientific Reports.
The study came out last year but has received fresh attention following the publication last week of a BBC story that considers, “How modern life is transforming the human skeleton.”
Since then, the unusual formations have captured the attention of Australian media, and have variously been dubbed “head horns” or “phone bones” or “spikes” or “weird bumps.”
Each is a fitting description, said David Shahar, the paper’s first author, a chiropractor who recently completed a PhD in biomechanics at Sunshine Coast.
“That is up to anyone’s imagination,” he told The Washington Post. “You may say it looks like a bird’s beak, a horn, a hook.”
However it is designated, said Shahar, the formation is a sign of a serious deformity in posture that can cause chronic headaches and pain in the upper back and neck.
Part of what was striking about their findings, he said, was the size of the bone spurs, which are thought to be large if they measure 3 or 5 millimeters in length. An outgrowth was only factored in to their research if it measured 10 millimeters, or about two-fifths of an inch.
The danger is not the head horn itself, said Mark Sayers, an associate professor of biomechanics at Sunshine Coast who served as Shahar’s supervisor and co-author. Rather, the formation is a “portent of something nasty going on elsewhere, a sign that the head and neck are not in the proper configuration,” he told The Washington Post.
Their work began about three years ago with a pile of neck X-rays taken in Queensland. The images captured part of the skull, including the area where the bony projections, called enthesophytes, form at the back of the head.
Contrary to conventional understanding of the hornlike structures, which have been thought to crop up rarely and mainly among older people suffering from prolonged strain, Shahar noticed that they appeared prominently on X-rays of younger subjects, including those who were showing no obvious symptoms.
The pair’s first paper, published in the Journal of Anatomy in 2016, enlisted a sample of 218 X-rays, of subjects ages 18 to 30, to suggest that the bone growth could be observed in 41 percent of young adults, much more than previously thought. The feature was more prevalent among men than among women.
The effect — known as enlarged external occipital protuberance — used to be so uncommon, Sayers said, that one of its early observers, toward the end of the 19th century, objected to its title, arguing that there was no real protrusion.
That’s no longer the case.
Another paper, published in Clinical Biomechanics in the spring of 2018, used a case study involving four teenagers to argue that the head horns were not caused by genetic factors or inflammation, pointing instead to the mechanical load on muscles in the skull and neck.
And the Scientific Reports paper, published the month before, zoomed out to consider a sample of 1,200 X-rays of subjects in Queensland, ages 18 to 86.
The researchers found that the size of the bone growth, present in 33 percent of the population, actually decreased with age. That discovery was in stark contrast to existing scientific understanding, which had long held that the slow, degenerative process occurred with aging.
They found instead that the bone spurs were larger and more common among young people. To understand what was driving the effect, they looked to recent developments — circumstances over the last 10 or 20 years altering how young people hold their bodies.
“These formations take a long time to develop, so that means that those individuals who suffer from them probably have been stressing that area since early childhood,” Shahar explained.
The sort of strain required for bone to infiltrate the tendon pointed him to handheld devices that bring the head forward and down, requiring the use of muscles at the back of the skull to prevent the head from falling to the chest. “What happens with technology?” he said.
“People are more sedentary; they put their head forward, to look at their devices. That requires an adaptive process to spread the load.”
That the bone growth develops over a long period of time suggests that sustained improvement in posture can stop it short and even ward off its associated effects.
The answer is not necessarily swearing off technology, Sayers said. At least, there are less drastic interventions.
“What we need are coping mechanisms that reflect how important technology has become in our lives,” he said.
Shahar is pressing people to become as regimented about posture as they became about dental hygiene in the 1970s, when personal care came to involve brushing and flossing every day. Schools should teach simple posture strategies, he said. Everyone who uses technology during the day should get used to recalibrating their posture at night.
As motivation, he suggested reaching a hand around to the lower rear of the skull. Those who have the hornlike feature can likely feel it.
9 Payment Service Bank (9PSB), Nigeria’s digital payment service bank, focused on financial inclusion has reiterated its support to Nigerian women entrepreneurs and Small and Medium Scale Enterprises through its agent banking business opportunities that will scale up their revenue base and improve their standard of living at the 2024 South-West Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Emerging Market Emerging Market Summit and Expo.
The event themed: Women Entrepreneur as Catalyst for Sustainable Development and Economic Growth held at Lagos State Co-operative Federation (LASCOFED) aimed at training and empowering over 500 women participants on entrepreneurship skills and fostering market link and economic growth, had in attendance women entrepreneurs and SMEs owners across South-West region who have been using their skills and resources to make purpose driven contributions to the society.
Speaking at the event, the Chief Executive Officer, and Managing Director, 9 Payment Service Bank, Branka Mracajac, represented by the Head of Sales Distribution and Strategic Partners, 9 Payment Service Bank (9PSB), Kunle Isiaka commended the women for their resilience and viable contributions to their communities through the various initiatives and businesses.
‘’I am indeed very thrilled to see these amazons who have been breaking all barriers without limitation in all strata of the society, women are truly the bedrock of the society, when a woman is trained, a nation is of course trained, we cannot over emphasize the need for the women the be financially included, empowered, and given the required support to thrive.
It is understood that a reasonable number of the women folks lack the basic financial knowledge, and many are financially excluded from the formal financial system, this has impacted to an extend their means of doing business.
A report by EFInA states that at least thirty-eight million (that is, 36%) Nigerian adults still do not have a bank account but majority of them have phones, it also shows that four out of every 10 Nigerians are financially excluded, and they are mostly females.
In Lagos State, there are at least eight million adults between the 18 years and above who live in Lagos and more influents daily. Out of this number, 54% of adults are business owners or traders and 28% of them receive payment digitally. With this statistics, 9 Payment Service Bank is working and consolidating on these areas.
“In addition, 91% of Lagos adult females are currently financially served, 6% of women in Lagos have access to credit facility, while we focus on the 8% excluded Lagosian, although our license does not permit us yet to give out loans, but we are doing everything possible to ensure we support the women through our agent banking training geared towards women empowerment,” Kunle added.
“As a bank providing services to the banked and underbanked, we dwell on strategic partnership with other players in the industry because we cannot do it all alone, we have the mandate to drive financial inclusion and ensure that every household is financially included. Also, a robust agent network spreading across the country to facilitate financial transactions have been of tremendous progress.
“We have empowered over 18,000 agents out of which over 45 per cent of them are women. As we make progress in this journey, our Service Location Partners will continue to engage you at your various locations with necessary support to thrive as a merchant in the payment services industry,” he remarked.
Google on Monday announced the opening of applications for the 8th cohort of its Google for Startups Accelerator Africa program. This cohort will have a strong focus on startups leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to address critical challenges and unlock new opportunities across the continent.
Startups are the lifeblood of innovation, driving economic growth, creating jobs, and solving some of society’s most pressing challenges. In Africa, digital transformation is accelerating rapidly and startups play a vital role in shaping the continent’s future from fintech and agritech to healthcare and education.
The Google for Startups Accelerator Africa is a three-month, equity-free virtual program that provides African startups with mentorship, technical resources, and access to a global network of experts and investors. Since its inception in 2018, the program has supported 106 startups from 17 African countries, and have collectively raised over $263 million and created more than 2,800 direct jobs.
“We’re excited to support the next generation of African AI pioneers through the Google for Startups Accelerator, providing them with the resources and mentorship they need to build successful, impactful businesses” said Folarin Aiyegbusi, Head of Startups Ecosystem, Africa at Google. “Africa’s tech ecosystem is a hotbed of innovation, and AI has the potential to be a transformative force across various sectors.”
The Class 8 program will run from June to September 2024 and will include:
Equity-free support: Up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits.
Mentorship: Personalised guidance from Google AI experts, seasoned entrepreneurs, and industry leaders.
Technical workshops: In-depth training on AI/ML development, product strategy, and scaling.
Global network: Connections to potential investors, partners, and customers.
Community: A supportive network of fellow founders facing similar challenges and opportunities.
Applications are open from April 29 to May 20, 2024, and can be submitted online at g.co/AcceleratorAfrica. Eligible startups must be based in Africa or building Africa-centric solutions and should be utilising AI/ML in a transformative way.
MTN Nigeria in collaboration with Pan-Atlantic University (PAU) held a graduation ceremony for the graduands of the second edition of its Media Innovation Programme (MIP) at the Lagos Business School, Lekki, Lagos on Friday, 26th April 2024.
Launched in 2022 in partnership with the School of Media and Communication, Pan Atlantic University, MIP is a six-month fully funded certificate fellowship set up to empower media practitioners and content creators to gain deeper insight into the ever-evolving media landscape.
Speaking about the benefits of the programme, Odunayo Sanya, Executive Director, MTN Foundation, said, “As fellows of the MTN MIP, we expect to hear of you, we expect to see you, visibly breaking new grounds, pushing the frontiers, and indeed setting very good standards.
“At MTN, this is our DNA, we do not leave people the way met them and when you look at our story, even as a commercial business, that’s the way it’s been.
“MTN has made a commitment to be a part of the sustainable development of Nigeria. We know we can’t do it alone, and that’s why we look for avenues like this and join hands to deliver transformation.”
The Dean of the School of Media and Communication, Pan-Atlantic University, Dr. Ikechukwu Obiaya, expressed his delight at the completion of the second edition of MIP. Sharing his congratulatory messages, he said, “Knowledge is power, but I’d ask this question, now that you have this knowledge, what are you going to do with it? You have all successfully completed the certificate programme which have consisted in a transmission of knowledge and knowledge as we know is empowering.
“But then knowledge could be useless if we do not apply it. So, I ask again, now that you have this knowledge what are you going to do with? I’d like to make a suggestion and that is to use knowledge to work towards change.
“We all complain a lot about the way things are and we could limit ourselves to those complaints, but the challenge is for us to actually make a difference in striving to improve the space in which we find ourselves. I don’t think any of us here will be able to change the world, but we can change the square-meter within which we find ourselves. Use knowledge to enrich the community.
“So while congratulating you, I also charge you in the goal of wanting to improve self, society and the particular space that you find yourself, I do hope that you will take up this charge to work with us in achieving these goals.”
Among the congratulations, the event’s highlight is inarguably the presentation of the award of excellence to two fellows, Chinenye Anuforo for Innovative Reportage on MTN Foundation and Abdulrasheed Hussain, Chairman’s Prize for innovation, who demonstrated diligence and hard work during their studies. The awards were presented.
Over the last two years, the MIP programme has proven to be one of the pioneers in training fellows in media and innovation in Nigeria. Through its capacity building, the MIP programme is posed to innovate the Nigerian media landscape.
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