What is your smartphone doing to your spine?

A new study, published by Dr. Kenneth Hansraj, chief of Spine Surgery at New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine, examines how the posture used while texting on a phone affects the spine, which concludes that excessive smartphone use may cause degeneration of the spine.

People spend an average of 700 to 1,400 hours each year with their heads tilted in such a fashion, according to Forbes, and students spend even longer – 5,000 hours per year on average. Tilting one’s head at 60 degrees puts 60 pounds of force on the cervical spine.

“It is an epidemic or, at least, it’s very common,” Hansraj told the Washington Post. “Just look around you, everyone has their heads down.”