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How Do Backpacks Effect Children?

Backpacks today are way to heavy for children to be caring around. When you have the weight of about three high school books and binders strapped to your back it starts to weigh you down. Some of the time this bags is about half or more of the weight of the child. This starts to causes all sources of problems. I have decided to do this paper because I was once in this position and four years later I am still paying for it. I want my children and grandchildren not to have to same problems that these helpful school bags have caused me.

There are several things that I find important to fixing this problem. They are knowing what causes backpacks to be so heavy, how to load and carry a backpack properly, the health problems, and different solutions to help solve this dilemma. More students today complain of a heavy backpack. The contents of a book bag seem to grow more each year. A normal backpack can contain at any one time; textbooks notebooks, supplies, gym clothes, coats, and lunch boxes. These items can weigh from ten to forty pounds (issue 991011).

Doctors suggest that students carry only ten to fifteen percent of their own body weight on their back. Obviously many of these children are caring ore than that around and are causing serious problems to their backs, shoulders, necks, and even stomachs. This is not good for a child’s growing bodies (Cusato). How you carry your backpack is as important as the design and strength of the book bag. If you carry your backpack only on one shoulder, like most of us do, you will more than likely end up with neck and shoulder pains and problems.

One major problem this causes, since you are doing this everyday week end and week out, is the pinching of nerves at the front of the shoulders; which in turns can cause tension headaches and sever pain in the shoulders. When the weight is too heavy and you pick the book bag up and down several times during a day then that slows but surly starts to effect your lower back; pinching nerves and possibly even moving disk around. Then if you care an extreme load of books you start to causes problems with the upper spine.

Which in return your body reacts with muscle spasms, popping of the back, and server pain (Bondi). The design of the backpack is important for the health and well being of our children and all students. There are some book bags out there that are against doctors orders. There are a couple of things that doctor recommends that the straps have. The first being that they must always be padded. This helps give your shoulders some padding so that the weight does not rub a blister on your shoulder. As well as keeping the bag raised a little off the shoulders to relieve a little pressure (Kahn).

What doctors really recommends’ to relieve a lot of that pressure is that your backpack has a waist band. This is better because it takes some of the pressure of your shoulders and distributes is evenly through the pelvis and hips (Lure). The other things about the straps are that both straps must also always be worn, and make sure that straps are adjusted to the correct ostion, not to high or low. Then the backpack also needs to have a lot of different compartments. These compartments help by spreading out the light weight things and even of the heavier things.

For example when you have two large zipper parts it helps to divided the weight of some of the notebook and books, at that evening out some of the support (Kahn). According to an article on the CNN website doctors would prefer if you just got a book bag on wheels. That way you can either push it or pull it and would not have to worry with medical bills, caused by this type of thing, for your back, shoulder, and neck. However, these backpacks still have regulations that you should follow to avoid pulling a muscle. Like as with a regular book bag you have to load this one properly.

Loading a backpack correctly means that you put the heaviest things closest to your back. And then the compartment in the front should contain the lightest items that you are caring. Finally the weight of you book bag should be no more than fifteen percent of your body weight (Cusato). If your back starts to bother you, you should remove your backpack as soon as possible. If you are wearing it only on one shoulder, move it o the other shoulder. If it is still to heavy, remove some of the heavier books and carry them in your arms in front, while you can carry the rest in your backpack.

This would distribute the weight evenly (Kahn). There are several solutions to the problems that we are facing with the book bags causing back, neck, and shoulder problems. The first is that more and more schools are making students use lockers. Another one is to make soft covered books, such as paperbacks. This would make them a little lighter and the students would take better care of them so that they do not become damaged. Lastly we could implement two sets of books, one for school and one for home.

That way the students would have them for school and them for home. That way it reduces how much weight is put on there back in return that reduces the medical problems that face our students today. I believe that another way is to make sure all students have laptop computers. If the book publishers would put all text books on the Internet there would be no need for us to carry any text books (CNN). I know that right know that sound expensive, but in all honesty the prices are going down and it could happen even in the next five years.

Know that I have done this research on backpacks and the effects of them. I think that we as a society should come up with a better idea for transporting the students work. There are some many more opinion that we have learned about, laptops or two sets of books. I believe that if we don’t fix this soon more of our students are going to have severe back, shoulder, and neck problems that make not be able to fix. I know that I have my own from caring my backpack around for the past fifteen years and I don’t want my children to be in that pain if they do not have to be.

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