Chin-up Because Like Smoking, Smartphones Can Give You Wrinkles!

You have to read this if you never put down your cell phone

You panic when it’s out of sight and ridiculously panic if you leave it at home. You justify being on the phone all the time because you might “miss a work email” and you find nothing more comforting than the familiar feeling of sliding your fingers across the screen. But respected members of the Smartphone Addiction Club, please put your phone down or else your face is going to fall!

After the text neck, blurred vision, selfie deaths, carpal tunnel syndrome, here comes the ‘smartphone face’ ! Just like smokers get the deep pucker around the upper lip area, excessive bending and flexing of the neck and facial muscles when you use the smartphone, many 18 to 39-year-olds are getting saggy jowls and the tech-neck wrinkles (thanks to a lot of gravity).

Well folks, the wrinkle epidemic is here and if your are not going to break up with your smartphone any time soon, it might be the right time to stock up on scarfs and turtlenecks.

Squinting to Read Emails

When you read small texts in bright outdoors, it puts immense pressure in the skin around your eyes. Dermatologists are seeing a surge of young girls coming in with crow’s feet and the frown lines, which otherwise don’t appear till the mid-30s or 40s.

What You Should Do

To minimise the strain on your eyes, adjust the brightness of your screen to your surroundings. Increase the text size of your phone to the largest possible setting, even if it makes you feel like a grandma. And keep your skin well hydrated and moisturised through the day.

Checking Emails Before Going to Bed

Reading the last email before going to bed massively messes up with your body’s ability to produce melatonin, the chemical that makes you sleepy. The blue light emitted from your phone ruins sound sleep, making you feel more groggy, your eyes puffy and your skin more dull.

What You Should Do

Well your skin needs 8 hours of shut-eye to feel alive, so if you are not convinced to put down your phone at night then at least dim the screen brightness and buy blue-light-blocking-covers (available online), to cut the intensity.

Constantly Chatting on the Phone Till It Overheats

Phones overheat after excessive usage and the heat can get too much for the sensitive skin, which can cause acne to flare up, mess up with the melatonin production, creating dark spots which are hard to remove. Tell-tale: if there are grease, make-up stains on your phone then you know you are guilty of the above.

What You Should Do

Use earphones as much as you can and clean your phone’s screen with an antibacterial wipe at least once a day. Acne gets worse with stress, so take a deep breath, practice meditation for a minimum of 10 minutes a day.

Constantly Looking Down To Refresh Your Facebook Feed

The skin on your neck is more sensitive than your facial skin. The collagen fibers can break only a fixed number of times and the constant up and down movement of the neck breaks down the tiny collagen fibers under the skin and therefore the wrinkles begin to appear.

What You Should Do

Hold up your phone to the eye level so your skin doesn’t fold too much and always put a skin firming cream on your jawline and neck area. Tech neck might sound silly, but dermatologists say there is compelling evidence that the problem is rampant.

So spend more time looking up. Kindly excuse me, going to stick my head out of the window to breathe and you should do that too. Your neck will thank me later.

Related Read: 7 Ways Your Smartphone is Ruining Your Health