"Unless you train yourself to stare straight ahead into your iPhone screen, you could be continually stressing your spine," The Atlantic reported, noting that pressure increases from around 27 pounds at a 15 degree angle to 60 pounds at a 60 degree angle. Researcher Kenneth Hansraj concluded in the study that such stress could lead to early wear and tear that could someday require surgical attention.

Although slumping to check a smartphone screen is only one aspect of bad posture, "it's certainly eyebrow-raising to learn that looking at Twitter in the supermarket checkout line is the equivalent of giving an aardvark a piggy-back ride," The Atlantic noted.

Easy iFixes

If you can’t limit the amount of time you spend on your smartphone, re-train yourself to hold your phone up at eye level, rather than hunching your body over the device. This helps relieve lower back pain and neck strain.

Damaged iSight

Staring at the tiny font on our smartphones to read articles, status updates, tweets or emails is causing major eye strain, which leads to blurred vision, dizziness, dry eyes, and eye damage. The combination of blurred vision and sore neck muscles can also lead to some serious headaches.

Further, several studies in recent years have shown that our habit of checking our smartphones before bed causes disruption in sleep patterns and vision damage. The blue light emitted by smartphones is extremely bright, and therefore damaging to look at when the lights are off.

Easy iFixes

You can increase your phone’s font size so that you aren’t straining to read. Or, as Dr. Mark Rosenfield suggested to Men’s Health, you can be sure to hold your phone more than 16 inches away from your face and give your eyes a break - look up from what you’re reading every few minutes and focus on something that’s far away.

If you can’t resist making one final round on social media at bedtime, do so before you turn the lights out. And once it’s lights out - leave your smartphone on the charger.