NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

That smartphone in your hand changes how you walk

By Markham Heid
New York Times·
24 Jan, 2024 06:00 AM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

That screen in your hand isn’t just diverting your attention. It also changes your mood, your gait and your posture. Photo / 123RF

That screen in your hand isn’t just diverting your attention. It also changes your mood, your gait and your posture. Photo / 123RF

Hunching over a device can mess with your gait, slow you down and poison your mood. And that’s before you trip and fall.

Spend time on any crowded sidewalk and you’ll see heads bent over and eyes cast downward. One recent study of college students found that one-quarter of people crossing intersections were glued to a device.

“I don’t think people are aware of how much they’re distracted and how much their situational awareness changes when they’re walking and using a phone,” said Wayne Giang, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Florida who has examined the link between phone use and walking injuries.

Indeed, our devices can cause what some experts call “inattentional blindness.” One study found that participants were half as likely to notice a clown on a unicycle — a cheeky touch — while walking and talking on a phone.

But that screen in your hand isn’t just diverting your attention. It also changes your mood, your gait and your posture — and hinders your ability to get from point A to B without running into trouble.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

How a phone breaks your stride

When we walk and use a phone at the same time, Giang said, we reflexively adjust how we move. Video footage of pedestrians has shown that people on phones walk about 10 per cent slower than their undistracted counterparts.

“You see a number of gait changes that reflect slowing down,” said Patrick Crowley, a project manager at the Technical University of Denmark who has studied the biomechanics of walking while using a phone. “People take shorter steps and spend longer time with both feet on the ground.”

These changes can gum up traffic on the sidewalk. And if walking makes up a big portion of your daily physical activity, strolling with a phone may have repercussions for your fitness, said Elroy Aguiar, an assistant professor of exercise science at the University of Alabama.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Looking down at a smartphone while walking — as opposed to standing up straight — can also increase the amount of load, or force, placed on the neck and upper back muscles, which can contribute to symptoms of “text neck.” And research in the journal Gait & Posture suggests all this could reduce balance and increase the risk of stumbles or falls.

How it affects your mood

When scientists want to study stress, they often ask people to perform several tasks at once. That’s because multitasking is a reliable way to stress people out.

Discover more

Lifestyle

Tight on time? How to make the most of a short workout

23 Jan 05:00 AM
Lifestyle

The best way to burn fat — and it isn’t hard work

22 Jan 08:00 PM
Lifestyle

Why cycling to work could be the fitness boost you need

18 Jan 04:00 PM
Lifestyle

How six months of setting goals changed my life completely

17 Jan 04:00 AM

There’s evidence that walking while using a phone functions this way, too, even if we’re not aware of it in the moment. One experiment found that the more people used a phone while walking on a treadmill, the more their levels of cortisol, the so-called stress hormone, tended to rise.

A 2023 study examined the psychological effects of walking in an outdoor park while looking at a phone — or not. “Generally, when people go for a walk, they feel better afterwards, and this is what we saw in the phone-free walking group,” said Elizabeth Broadbent, one of the authors of the study and a professor of health psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

“In the phone-walking groups, these effects were reversed,” she added. “Instead of feeling more positive after walking, people felt less positive — less excited, less happy, less relaxed.”

She and her study co-authors attributed these negative effects to a phone user’s lack of connection with the surrounding environment. It’s now widely accepted that spending time walking in natural spaces is good for your mood and mental health. “It appears that to get these benefits, it’s important that your attention is on the environment, rather than on your phone,” she said.

The dangers of being distracted

Most of us understand that walking and using a phone can be risky. Some cities, such as Honolulu, have even passed laws to rein in distracted pedestrians. But research on those dangers has turned up some surprises.

Giang’s work has looked at the connection between “phone-related distracted walking” and emergency department visits. Using government data spanning the years 2011 to 2019, he and his colleagues turned up nearly 30,000 walking injuries occasioned by phones. While many of those accidents occurred on streets and sidewalks, almost one-quarter happened at home. Tripping over something or falling down the stairs is a real risk, Giang said.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Age was one of the major risk factors for phone-related walking injuries, his study found. Young people from the ages of 11-20 had the highest proportion of injuries, followed by adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s — perhaps because younger people use their phones more than older people do, he said.

So how do you stay safe? If you want to check your phone, Giang recommended just stopping for a moment — preferably out of the path of other pedestrians.

If you do walk and use your device at the same time, he advised refraining when you’re around stairs, crosswalks and cluttered or uneven terrain — all settings where, according to his research, accidents are more likely to occur.

“Even alert and aware people are injured walking,” he added. “If you’re distracted by a phone, you’re definitely putting yourself at some risk.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Markham Heid

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Lifestyle

Lifestyle

How many have you tried? Auckland's new Top 100 Iconic Eats named

16 Jun 04:30 AM
New Zealand

Why Matariki has become one of NZ's most meaningful public holidays

16 Jun 03:37 AM
RoyalsUpdated

Prince Harry celebrated as 'the best' dad in Father's Day tribute

16 Jun 03:30 AM

It was just a stopover – 18 months later, they call it home

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

How many have you tried? Auckland's new Top 100 Iconic Eats named

How many have you tried? Auckland's new Top 100 Iconic Eats named

16 Jun 04:30 AM

Debut dishes include an halal pepperoni pizza, raw ramen, honey toast - and four pies.

Why Matariki has become one of NZ's most meaningful public holidays

Why Matariki has become one of NZ's most meaningful public holidays

16 Jun 03:37 AM
Prince Harry celebrated as 'the best' dad in Father's Day tribute

Prince Harry celebrated as 'the best' dad in Father's Day tribute

16 Jun 03:30 AM
Premium
How to divorce well: Kiwi lawyer on how to avoid mistakes many couples make

How to divorce well: Kiwi lawyer on how to avoid mistakes many couples make

16 Jun 01:30 AM
Sponsored: Embrace the senses
sponsored

Sponsored: Embrace the senses

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP