7 Ways Technology Can Torpedo Your Health

Look up from your laptop.

Caution: Do not read this article hunched awkwardly over your tablet. Check it out, absolutely, just not on your mobile device while driving, eating dinner or "wooing" a date -- lest you risk extinguishing budding love. Want to be a dad someday? Take the laptop off your lap before continuing on. A parent already? Read the applicable slides with your child, refraining from sneaking a peak at the phone in your lap while lecturing your teen about her own incessant smartphone use. For just as tech can enhance your life, it can also torpedo your health, in ever-emerging ways.

Connectivity leaves couples feeling disconnected.

Is your relationship on the rocks because of your affair with your smartphone? "Technoference" -- or everyday intrusions and interruptions due to technological devices, such as computers and smartphones -- can undermine romantic relationships, according to research published online last December in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture. "When individuals place their technology above their partner, even if unintentionally and only for a brief moment, they can sow conflict in their romantic relationship," says Brandon McDaniel, who led the study. Those who experienced higher rates of technoference reported lower relationship satisfaction, more depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction.

Friends don't let friends Facebook and drive.

According to the National Safety Council, an estimated 1 in 4 car crashes involves cell phone use. Advances in technology are only further competing for our attention on the road, says David Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah, who has studied distracted driving for the better part of two decades. "We're doing things to make drivers more distracted in many situations," he says, including making it more convenient to plug into an online social network, or view video or text while driving. And not just on mobile devices, but on systems built into vehicles, too.

Distracted dining may lead to weight gain.

Research led by Barbara Fiese, director of the Family Resiliency Center at the University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign, found that distracted dining put children at risk for increased food consumption and obesity. The study, published this month in Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice -- an American Psychological Association journal -- found that when someone was loudly vacuuming in an adjacent room, adults eating with their kids became distracted and noshed on less-healthy foods, like cookies, and knocked back greater quantities of the unhealthy fare than those who weren't eating in distracting situations. And, Fiese says: "This pattern may extend to distractions such as watching TV, talking on the cell phone, texting or scrolling through screens."

Looking at a cellphone can be a pain in the neck.

Research published last year by New York City-based spine surgeon Dr. Kenneth Hansraj found that simply looking down at our cellphones can strain our spines. An adult head normally weighs 10 to 12 pounds, but angling it at 60 degrees -- like when stooping to read a text -- increases the pressure to 60 pounds. "These stresses may lead to early wear, tear, degeneration and possible surgeries," Hansraj wrote in the study in the National Library of Medicine.

For men, using a laptop might affect fertility.

Guys who want to become dads may wish to refrain from using their laptop (on their laps) to Google what the role entails. That's because a study published several years ago in the journal Fertility and Sterility linked radiation emitted by laptops set up for Wi-Fi to sperm damage. Researchers speculated based on their findings that "keeping a laptop connected wirelessly to the Internet on the lap near the testes may result in decreased male fertility." This follows previous research that found that heat from laptops could damage sperm.

Tech can rob you of sleep.

While doctors have long labeled nighttime TV a sleep stealer, the ubiquity of technology -- from more screened devices to increased portability -- has invited this issue right into bed. Heavy technology use is linked to increased fatigue and stress, since it can reduce sleep quality, and jerk you awake with the buzz of an alert or text, when your eyes do close. That's in addition to the eye strain and headaches these devices can deliver.

Tech can cause a mental drain.

Research shows that hyper-connected adolescents now face greater anxiety and depression, since stressors can follow them virtually -- from social pressure to respond immediately to texts to being cyberbullied. Experts say it's imperative that adults lead by example, taking breaks from technology, including cellphones. "When parents assume that they need to use these 24/7, their kids do, too," says Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital. Being on mobile devices, he adds, should not be a default activity.

Michael Schroeder is a health editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at mschroeder@usnews.com.