smartphone face

The combination of sagging jowls, double chins, and "marionette lines," those vertical creases that run from the corners of the mouth towards the chin, that come from staring down and using your smartphone too much.

Historical perspective: Is your cell phone making making your face sag? Yes. Your smartphone plus gravity equals drooping jowls and double chins. Our growing reliance on smartphones and laptops is elongating our faces into jowly, sagging messes, according to cosmetic surgeons and other beauty pundits. They've even come up with a suitably distressing name for this phenomenon: "smartphone face." Coined by British cosmetic surgeon Dr. Mervyn Patterson, the term describes a combination of sagging jowls, double chins, and "marionette lines," those vertical creases that run from the corners of the mouth towards the chin. As Patterson explains to the London Evening Standard, "If you sit for hours with your head bent slightly forward, staring at your iPhone or laptop screen, you may shorten the neck muscles and increase the gravitational pull on the jowl area, leading to a drooping jawline." The name also works on another level; face sag becomes especially noticeable when you take photos of yourself or video-chat on your handheld device.

What to do? Options include a range of cosmetic "chinterventions," says the Evening Standard's Leah Hardy. While a chin implant will typically set you back thousands of dollars, you can also firm up your jawline with less-invasive techniques such as injections of chin-sculpting filler or special Botox treatments (both hundreds of dollars), skin-tightening radio frequency waves or liposuction/laser facelifts (both thousands of dollars). If you want to save a wad of cash, how about keeping your chin up, or go offline more often.