Do smartphones threaten our physical health? Here’s what we know about their impact

A sports doctor writes in his book that smartphones are a problem for our physical health and recommends that people try to reduce their screen time.

Two years ago, a doctor in Brest, France launched a campaign to attempt to get people to put down their smartphones.

The challenge was carried out among a self-selected group already ready to reduce the time they spent on their phones.

Yet Yannick Guillodo, a sports doctor with Brest’s University Hospital Centre (CHU), says around three-quarters of the nearly 500 participants they surveyed were unable to reduce their phone time by an hour a day.

But nine in 10 of those that did succeed were more physically active, according to their analysis which is in pre-print.

Now, he’s written a book published in French with a provocative title that translates to “Smartphones Kill” (Le smartphone tue), warning that not only are the phones hard to put down, but they also make people more sedentary.

“I was initially interested in the relationship between the number of smartphones and induced sedentary lifestyle. Because when we look at the smartphone, we are sitting on a sofa, or in a chair,” he told Euronews Health.

“If I spend one more hour on a smartphone sitting in a chair, I spend one more hour [sitting]. And on that, we have studies which clearly show that a sedentary lifestyle is a clear risk factor for chronic diseases, so-called non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, stroke, heart disease, certain cancers and so on,” he added.

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Phones linked to a sedentary lifestyle

Andrew Lepp, a professor at Kent State University in the US, has also studied the topic of phone use and physical activity.

“We have conducted numerous s