About That 'Cell Phones Give You Horns' Study: Brainstorm Health

Good afternoon, readers.

One day, I’m going to have do an empirical study on the correlation between eye-catching public health stories and the time of year (I have a strange suspicion that they tend to spike round the summer time). The latest: A claim by Australian scientists that frequent use of cell phones, tablets, and our various other black mirrors are literally changing our skeletons – and may even lead to something akin to “horns” in adolescents.

But let’s dig a bit deeper before we start slapping the “horn” warnings on iPhones. For one thing, this research is actually a year old but has caught new wind. For another, it’s an observational study that relied on existing X-ray imaging to reach its conclusions, rather than a randomized, long-term clinical trial.

Basically, the researchers noticed a higher frequency of bone spurs (the aforementioned “horns”) in the head and neck regions of younger people’s X-rays (and these are all from Queensland, Australia). It’s not entirely clear just how concerning those spurs may be

That’s not to say that new technologies and working habits don’t have real effects on our bodies – just ask the millions of working Americans with lower back pain, a trend that’s spiked in an increasingly sedentary work culture. Just don’t worry too much about sprouting horns anytime soon.

Read on for the day’s news.

Sy Mukherjee

@the_sy_guy

sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com

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THE BIG PICTURE

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