‘Twalking’ injuries – suffered while texting and walking – have risen 50 percent since 2012: including 67-year-old woman who fell down trapdoor and man who fell off cliff taking photo of sunset

Scrolling through a text on your phone, checking your email, or scrolling through social media can result in a hospital visit.

Injuries from “walking” or texting while walking are becoming more common, with doctors seeing an increase in patients with cuts, bruises and even fractures as a result of distracted walking.

Researchers have found that texting while driving will soon become the leading cause of technical injuries in the United States.

Phones are now responsible for 23 percent of technical injuries nationwide, from tripping over cords to bumping into objects while texting.

This has made phones the second most dangerous technology product in America, behind televisions, which routinely cause injuries when people try to pick them up.

Texting was the leading cause of phone-related incidents (334), followed by talking with 333 and walking with 281.

It comes after Australian scientists said taking selfies should be considered a “public health issue”.

Decluttr, an online trade-in platform that buys unwanted technology, used National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) data collected over the past decade on technology-related injuries and found that it has increased 20 percent since 2020.

The increase is partly due to pandemic lockdowns making us more dependent on technology, the company said.

And technology-dependent millennials are the most accident-prone.

Types of incidents included running into lamp posts and bus stops, tripping over water fountains, and falling down stairs.

The most common complaint for walking injuries was general pain, followed by bruising and lacerations, especially on the face and head.

Dr. Sean Rockett, a New England podiatrist, told DailyMail.com he’s seen “a lot of sprained ankles and broken wrists from curb falls” while patients were on their phones.

A team from Australia analyzed scientific articles and media reports of selfie-related injuries or deaths worldwide since 2008 and found that about 400 such cases were reported over the 13-year study period, including 77 in the United States.

The victims were most likely female tourists in their 20s, and falls and drowning while taking photographs were the two leading causes of death.

In 2017, a 67-year-old woman fell through a door on a sidewalk in New Jersey because she was distracted by her phone.

She was then rushed to hospital for medical treatment.

In 2015 A man died after falling from a cliff in San Diego after police believe he was trying to take photos of the sunset.

“He wasn’t paying attention to where he was going and was looking more at the device,” said San Diego Rescue Sgt. Bill Bender told CBS.

In August 2012, a Philadelphia man fell onto the train tracks while talking on the phone but was helped off the tracks before the train arrived.

In the same year A.An Indiana mother named Bonnie Miller had to be rescued from Lake Michigan after she fell into the water while walking on a pier and not paying attention to text messages.

“I made an appointment at the wrong time, so I sent about three words. Next thing you know, it was water,” Ms. Miller told ABC57.com after the March 2012 accident.

Her husband realized what was happening and jumped in after her as other passersby called for help.

In 2011, 19-year-old Ryan Robbins died after a night in Melbourne, Australia, when he accidentally stepped over a short railing in a parking lot and fell to his death while texting a friend.

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia asked 50 young people to walk along a tiled path that had slippery tiles that could cause them to slip.

They did this either without texting or by typing the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” into their phone.

Texting was found to increase the risk of accidental falls in study volunteers who were recorded slipping but were wearing seat belts to prevent them from falling to the ground and being injured.

The results—that pedestrians who text are at risk of falling—may seem obvious, but motion sensors attached to each person provide insight into why texting while walking is potentially such a bad idea.

When people were texting, their gait was less stable and they had a harder time regaining their balance.

Separate similar study published in JAMA in 2019, looked at 20 years of data from emergency departments and noticed an uptick in cell phone-related incidents.

Researchers found that the number of cell phone-related head and neck injuries during activities such as walking increased steadily between 1998 and 2017 as cell phones became a constant companion for most Americans.

While most injuries were minor, such as cuts and bruises, some were more serious and included fractures.