Hooked hands, a hump and double eyelids: scientists have shown a woman of the future who will live in the year 3000. Photo.

You've probably caught yourself at least once feeling pain in your fingers, neck, or shoulders, or discomfort in your eyes after browsing social media, messaging, or playing games on your smartphone. Scientists warn that these habits can have a negative impact not only on your health but also on your distant descendants.

According to the Daily Mail, experts from the American telecom provider Toll Free Forwarding decided to model what a person of the year 3000, a descendant of generations of regular smartphone and laptop users, would look like. What they came up with can be a pretty convincing argument in favor of spending less time with your gadgets.

The grotesque model is called Mindy. She gives an idea of what people might look like in less than eight centuries as a result of the total dependence on technology. The woman has a short and wide neck, a hunched back, deformed fingers and a second eyelid. "We obtained scientific research and expert opinions on this issue before working with a 3D designer to create a future person whose body has physically changed due to the constant use of smartphones, laptops, and other technologies," the company explained.

The hunched posture will be the result of people looking down at the screen of a smartphone or laptop for hours. And our hands will take on the shape of a claw precisely because we are used to holding gadgets in our palms. Thus, according to Dr. Nikola Djordjevic of Med Alert Help, the way we hold the phone causes excessive tension at certain points of contact and can provoke the so-called "text claw" known medically as cubital tunnel syndrome. It is also known as ulnar tunnel syndrome, which causes numbness in the arm and constant tingling or pain in the elbow, shoulder, or fingers.

Doctors also describe the so-called "smartphone elbow". Because we bend our arm at a 90-degree angle when holding a smartphone and keep it in that position for a long time, the nerve that runs through the elbow can stretch and cause pain.

In addition to a hunched back, sticking to gadgets can lead to a thickened neck. "When you're working at a computer or looking at your phone, the muscles in the back of your neck have to contract to hold your head up," explains Dr. C. Daniel Rue of Presbyterian Orch Spine Hospital in New York City. He warns that these muscles also start to hurt due to overuse.

Other grotesque features that can happen to people because of the gadget craze include a thicker skull and a smaller brain, as well as the appearance of a second eyelid to protect the eye from excessive light exposure. Another evolutionary path is the development of the lens in such a way that it begins to block blue light. This assumption was made by Kasun Ratnayake from the University of Toledo.

The authors of the model shared that their Mindy was the successor to Emma, created in 2019. Its developers wanted to show how important good workplace conditions are. Emma also suffered from back problems due to a constantly hunched posture from sitting at a desk, she had dry red eyes from a computer monitor and yellow skin because she spent years without sunlight, but under office lamps.