Humans were designed to stand upright(直立). And yet in this modern world, too many of us spend our days with our heads lowered for a simple reason: we’re staring at the tiny screen of a smartphone.

People spend an average of 2 to 4 hours each day with their neck bent while shooting off emails or texts. That’s 700 to 1,400 hours a year. The success of social media has led to a rapid development of bad smartphone posture(姿势). That’s 700 to 1,400 hours a year. The success of social media has led to a rapid development of bad smartphone posture.

The average adult head weighs 10 to 12 pounds when it’s in the upright position. However, because of the gravity, bending your head at a mere 15 degree puts 27 pounds of pressure on your spine(脊椎); a 30 degree neck bend could equal 40 pounds of a pressure; a 45 degree bend adds the force of 49 pounds, according to research from Dr. Kenneth Hansraj from New York. These stresses may lead to many problems.

It’s no secret that correct posture is better for your back. According to the researchers, good posture is described as ears aligned(成一条直线) with the shoulders. In proper alignment, spinal stress disappeared. It is the best position for the spine. Other studies have found good posture has even been connected to ways of behaving.

People who have poorer posture often have poorer physical and emotional(情绪上的) health as well as many medical problems, including headaches, depression and heart disease.Though it is nearly impossible to avoid the technologies that cause these problems, people should make an effort to look at their phones with a correct posture.

The Internet, E-commerce and globalization are making a new economic era possible. In the future, capitalist markets will largely be replaced by a new kind of economic system based on networked relationships, contractual (契约的) arrangements and access rights.

Has the quality of our lives at work, at home and in our communities increased in direct proportion (比例) to all the new Internet and business-to-business Internet services being introduced into our lives? I have asked this question of hundreds of CEOs and corporate executives in Europe and the United States. Surprisingly, virtually everyone has said, “No, quite contrary.” The very people responsible for showing in what some have called a “technological renaissance” say they are working longer hours, feel more stressed, are more impatient, and are even less civil (礼貌的) in their dealings with colleagues and friends—not to mention strangers. And what’s more revealing, they place much of the blame on the very same technologies they are so aggressively championing (捍卫).

We are told that access would make life more convenient and give us more time. Instead, the very technological wonders that were supposed to liberate us have begun to enslave us in a web of connections from which there seems to be no easy escape.

If an earlier generation was concerned about the goal to enclose a vast geographic frontier, the generation to come, it seems, is more caught up in the colonization (殖民) of time. Every spare moment of our time is being filled with some form of commercial connection, making time itself the scarcest of all resources. Our e-mail, voice mail and cell phones, our 24-hour Interact news and entertainment all seize for our attention.

While we have created every kind of labor-and-time-saving device to serve our needs, we are beginning to feel like we have less time available to us than any other humans in history. That is because the wide spread of labor-and-time-saving services only increases the diversity, pace and flow of common day activity around us. For example, e-mail is a great convenience. However, we now find ourselves spending much of our day anxiously responding to each other’s electronic messages. The cell phone is a great time-saver, except now we are always likely to reach someone else who wants our attention.

Social conservatives talk about the decline in civility and blame it on the loss of a morality and religious values. Has anyone bothered to ask whether the fast speed culture is making all of us less patient and less willing to listen, consider and reflect?

Maybe we need to ask what kinds of connections really count and what types of access really matter in the e-economy era. If this new technology revolution is only about efficiency, then we risk losing something even more precious than time—our sense of what it means to be a caring human being.

In my class in high school, there was a girl who was considered the most unpopular. No one actually knows how this exclusion came from, but we all followed it for no reason at all. One day after lunch, we girls sat on the track field, talking about things that happened in our lives. Someone brought her up, and soon the topic transformed to laughing at the funny hairstyle of her, the stupid way she walked and....I felt extremely uncomfortable but kept silent, because I didn't want to be the one “supporting” the common enemy. After all, it's just a short gossip time among a trusted group of friends; why should I bring unnecessary tension?

Suddenly, one of my friends pointed her finger towards somewhere behind me. All of us turned around and saw that exact girl, hand still in the air, with a twisted (扭曲的) look on her face. She lowered her hand in slow movement, then turned around and ran off. For a second, I wanted to stand up and chase her down to tell her that no one meant what they said, and that she is an amazing person being who she is. But my legs felt so heavy, I didn't want to make a fool out of myself - why bother taking care of the class clown (小丑)? People would think that I was crazy as well!

A few weeks later, the teacher told us that a classmate dropped out of school - it was that girl. Her parents told the school that it was the peer pressure that made her want to leave. The teacher wanted to know who the bully (霸凌) was. Again, no one spoke a word. Perhaps it was exactly this cold, hard silence that drove her away. I certainly did not raise my hand. I had never even said anything bad about her; it was my friends who loved to make fun of her every day. Surely, I didn't bully her physically or with my language, but I kept silent when others did. By failing to stand up for her and offering her support, I was giving agreement, which made others think that it was okay to mistreat her. Perhaps if I had realized I was wrong earlier - instead of convincing myself that I had nothing to do with her leaving, I wouldn't have to bear the burden of heavy shame on my shoulders.