It’s called “smartphone pinky,” and it’s got some people terrified.
People on social media (especially Twitter) began posting last week about the strange injury, and if you use your smartphone regularly, it’s an alarming idea.
@JadaxMonet/Twitter
Here’s what happens, according to internet lore: You hold your phone while sticking out your pinky. The finger provides stability so that every tap doesn’t send your device tumbling to the floor.
But over time, the weight of your phone starts to affect a change on your body. Your muscles begin to adapt to the position; soon, it’s permanent.
And Twitter users claim to have proof.
“I have an actual #iphone injury,” wrote one Twitter user (@lucypurnell). “My finger has bent & will not straighten. Need to change the way I hold my phone.”
I have an actual
We can’t deny that the pictures appear to show some sort of musculoskeletal issue, but we wondered whether there’s any science to explain the condition.
Popular Science tracked down an expert to determine if, in fact, our hands are reshaping themselves to our phones. The verdict: probably not.
“It would be pretty hard to deform any of your fingers just by holding a cell phone,” Rachael Rohde, the chair of the Public Education Committee for the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, told the magazine.
“As a hand surgeon, I think it’s more likely there’s something going on here to begin with, another condition, that they didn’t realize [they had] and thought it might be related to the phone.”
For a second opinion, The Sydney Herald@Foreigndre_ / Twitter
reached out to Dave Parsons of Curtin University’s School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work.
Parsons agreed that smartphone pinky probably wasn’t real.
“It would take a minimum of around six hours a day of an applied force on soft tissue to evoke change,” he told the paper. “If someone was on their phone for more than six hours, it is plausible, but it is still pretty unlikely.”
“[Smartphone pinky] can be cumulative over the day, but obviously longer sustained periods would increase the susceptibility.”
Gabriel Saldana via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0
Parsons noted that while this probably isn’t a real issue, regular smartphone usage can be detrimental to your hands. He noted that thumbs are particularly susceptible to repetitive stress injuries from smartphone use, since most people use their thumbs for scrolling and tapping—sometimes for hours at a time.
Whether or not you believe in the “smartphone pinky” injury, there are steps you can take to protect your hands from repetitive stress injuries. Take frequent breaks when using your smartphone for extended periods of time, stretch out your fingers, and if you feel pain, see a physician right away. Our smartphones certainly don’t have to hurt our pinkies—or any other part of our bodies, for that matter.
