WATCH: Screen time found to cause ‘head horns’

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Transcript for Screen time found to cause ‘head horns’

We are back now with that health alert about overusing your phone. New research suggests that constantly looking down at your screen as Michael is doing right now could give you so-called head horns, bumps on your neck that can look like horns on an x-ray. Dr. Ashton will break this down for us but first Becky Worley has the details. Reporter: If you think your teenager’s smartphone use makes them act demonic at times a new study says, yep, and they may be growing horns. What? The shape is starting to appear and we thought, well, that’s quite bizarre. And that sort of started a cascade of events after that. Reporter: An Australian survey of 1200 skull k3r5is found 33% found horn-like protuberances growing and the hypothesis, repeated forward tilting of the head during tech use lengthens tendons stimulating bone spur-like growths. Dare I say phone bones. We never thought bone spurs so large can occur at such an early age. Reporter: In this x-ray of a 28-year-old male the protrusion is 27.8 millimeters long, or just over an inch. That’s like the tip of your pinkie finger sticking out of your skull. While this has some doubters, it begs the question, are we physically evolving because of technology? It’s not unheard of. Think bone spurs by women who wear high heels repeatedly. Still a big leap to make us think phone use will make us grow horns. It’s not about the spur but the underlying structures and this is the spur is a warning sign. It is a flashing light that is reminding us that there is poor underlying posture in this region. Reporter: For “Good morning America,” Becky Worley, Oakland, California. All right, Dr. Ashton is here now. We’ve talked about the potential dangers of kids using their phones and electronic devices but horns is a new one — That’s not the medical term. It’s bone spur. We talked about this a lot. Overuse, repetitive use, injuries associated with always being in our head down affecting the head, the neck, the shoulders, the elbows, the thumb and when you look at the weight placed on an adult by having their head in that position it could add 60 pounds of weight and pressure and gets transmitted back to the cervical spine and muscles and tendons that attach. How do they happen. Michael is probably hearing this a lot in sports. We see them any time there is tendon and muscle attaching to bone so want to thanks mt. Sinai for lending us this model. It would be forming right here. If when it’s placed under tension there is inflammation, calcium deposits and get little protuberance, bone spur, not horns and could see them anywhere in the body. Long-term effects. We don’t know. That is the qualifying thing. This study like so many we report on based on observation and association not cause and effect and do not know if this is harmful. Common sense, try to look up. Better posture — I don’t like those protuberances anyway. Gets to me. Thanks, doc. I will texting like this from now on. All right. Thank you, doc. Coming up, our “Play of the day” and you’ve got to see this.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

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