It's backpack season. Kids are boarding the bus. College students are back in their dorms. And I'm reminded of my serious neck ache from my own shoulder bag. It's a good time to take stock and ask yourself: are you or your child carrying too much in your bag or backpack?
While back pain is well-reported among adults, less is known about the long-term pain children suffer from heavy bags. In fact, when the National Institutes of Health first looked into it in 2006, they were shocked to discover that 37% of children age 11-14 reported some amount of back pain as a result of carrying a heavy bag.
So what can you do about it?
For starters, pack your backpack or bag every night. Oftentimes we throw more than we need in our bags as we rush out the door in the morning. By carefully thinking about the day ahead, you can plan for each item.
As we get older, the amount of tech we carry around only increases. Between a laptop, eReader and camera, you could easily be carrying an extra 10 to 12 pounds on your shoulder. In this case, consider adding supplemental products to your life that will lighten the load and allow you to remove heavier items. For example, start doing your word processing on Google Docs and carry around a lightweight bluetooth keyboard so you can type from your eReader, tablet or mobile phone instead of taking the laptop.
If you have children, it's especially important that you condense and simplify. That means only having one notebook in their bag, as opposed to one notebook for each school subject. If possible, buy two of inexpensive tech like calculators and leave one at school and one at home. Remember, lunch gets heavy too, so do small things like having your child buy their beverages at school instead of throwing it in their backpack. Not only will this prevent spilling, but it will also lighten their bag dramatically.
(Images: Elizabeth Giorgi)
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The weight of kids' backpacks is a disgrace imo.
In our (public) school system, the backpacks are light until middle school. At that point, you have very little control over the contents of the backpack: Each teacher *requires* separate notebooks for each subject, for example, and often there are books or workbooks associated with each class as well. One day a week, this means all notebooks must be carried. In addition, our middle school has no lockers, and the kids must dress in uniforms for PE, so throw a uniform in that backpack twice a week. On the plus side, the school does have drinking fountains, so no need for an extra drink for lunch!
Backpacks on wheels are helpful on campus, but unwieldy for biking. I'm not sure of the solution, but agree that too-heavy packs are a problem.
I've had shoulder problems since I was 17, which I believe was due to heavy backpacks in high school. I had to bring home a number of textbooks every night.
From 5th grade on my backpack averaged about 25lbs - 30lbs-- and my high school was in a historical building without elevators (you know the high school in the movie "10 Things I Hate About You" -- that's where I went) so I had to make it from the 4th floor tower on one side, down, across the courtyard, and up to the 4th floor tower on the opposite side of campus, while fighting through 2K other students -- all in 6 minutes or less.
Textbooks can weigh 8 pounds easily, plus the mandatory notebooks, plus lunch, tech, pens, & calculators, plus -- if you're a teenage girl -- a purse with makeup, tampons, and all the other detritus that gets shoved in.
Wheelie backpacks help for long stretches of walking on flat surfaces, but a lot of time they're completely impractical for kids fighting through crowds or going up stairs. I recommend getting a high quality backpack that has "backpacker" style features. Straps that buckle at the hips and chest, and features that distribute the load in a healthy way.
What I'd really like (but don't see happening) is for America to switch to what they do in places like Germany -- the class stays in one place, and different teachers come in to lecture throughout the day. It would clear out the hallways, take the burden off the kid's backs, and minimize interruptions.
Kids in the coming generation may have it easier with their backpacks. A lot of schools are starting to adapt to uploading reading content on portable tablets so that would eliminate a lot of textbooks. The whole other issue with that is that it becomes a financial issue b/c well, tablets aren't cheap.
Choosing fabric bags over leather bags would reduce weight significantly. So I was shopping for a Coach bag. With the same design, the fabric one is more than 2 pounds lighter than the leather one.
I went to a crazy competitive elementary school in Hong Kong in the 80s. We hauled around 20 pounds of books and walk or take public buses to school. I suspect it has to do with why over half of my friends from elementary school, including myself, have back pain for life.
If your child must carry more than 10 pounds of books, try buying a rolling backpack. I wish we had that when I was a child!
@night -- true about tablets being expensive -- but so are text books. A math book can cost $75 all by itself -- multiply that times 7 subjects, and the costs are pretty much the same. Hopefully the technology will become less breakable in the next few years, and will be able to stand up to some rough handling, and schools will be eager to adopt it.
NIGHT, textbooks aren't cheap. I don't know what the digital copy of a textbook costs, but the cost of one book can easily pay for a kindle or similar. A tablet is probably less than one semester's worth of textbooks. I think the tablet/eReader will easily pay for itself.
In Spain kids have small trolleys for their backpacks... that way they carry nothing on their backs.
In response to the eReader debate - why bother with eReaders at all? The Kindle app for the computer is free, and an increasing amount of high school students have laptops anyway. Using laptops in class would eliminate the need for notebooks, too, I think. They DO cost a lot more than an eReader, though.
Let's see, in high school I had to carry anywhere between 3 and 5 textbooks every day, 6 three-ring binders, 2-3 folders, a graphing calculator, lunch, a water bottle, a novel or two for English class, rulers/protractors/floppy disks/pens and pencils/erasers/spare change, a big folio of sheet music, and a flute, and my coat/jacket/scarves/gloves in the winter. We had six minutes between class and it was too risky to have a locker because oftentimes I got snarled in crowds on the way to and from it. I did have a gym locker, thankfully, and I always wore sneakers the year I had PE so it was one less thing to worry about. I'd probably die nowadays if I had to carry all of that and a laptop.
our kids are not allowed wheeled backpacks- they don't fit in the lockers according to the district. My son is in 3rd grade and his stuff isn't all that heavy-10 lbs or so...but he only weights 50lbs so it's an issue and I know that it's only going to get worse....
Hmm... I had to carry around 50lbs. or more my first semester of college. Now I take a satchel with: bluetooth keyboard, ipad, ipod, 1 binder, pen, pencil, eraser, highlighter, book tags, 1 notebook,sandwich & stainless steel water bottle, wallet with student i.d. :) Take advantage of online classes, it will save you life, gas milage and your back. Weight of my satchel is usually around 15lbs. or less.
@Night, If you're a college student studying science (I did microbiology for a while) you easily spend 5 or 6 hundred dollars a semester on books. @lacazier Reading a backlit screen gives some people a headache. I love my e-reader but I can't focus on reading anything off of my computer screen or ipod.
I remember carrying my gen chem, college algebra and trig, and a massive bio book along with my ibook and notebooks in a cross body bag and dying from the back pain. The best part of switching to art was that I suddenly only needed paperbacks.
My school seems progressive looking back in that we were NOT allowed to carry backpacks at all from 7th-12th grade. Lockers were the only way to store items and luckily someone was thinking when they organized by grade each hallway. So that really cut down on running all over campus. However in college I suffered enough to make up for all those blissful years without a backpack. Laptop, books, books, books (this was pre-eReader days), and art supplies!! Visual Arts was fun, but maaaan was it a lot of stuff to haul around!
I'm shocked at that statistic - 37% seems ridiculously, bizarrely low to me. But then, I was absolutely one of those kids, and today I suppose I might have had a Kindle or something to lessen the weight. Maybe.
I don't know about everyone arguing 'well, tablets aren't cheap but neither are textbooks'. I went to public schools my whole life, and until college - when no one cared what format my textbook was, or even if I had one - textbooks were FREE. (As in, owned by the school and issued to me for my temporary use.)
I remember in high school that you could spot a freshman based on the size of their backpack. They hadn't yet mastered the school's layout or figured out when to stop at their locker throughout the day, so they pretty much just crammed everything in their bags and carried it around all day. The tiniest 14-year-olds always seemed to have the largest bags. They looked like little turtles.
I find the idea of trying to save weight by carrying one notebook to be pretty ridiculous. For quite a number of my high school classes, I'd have notebooks labelled by volume and date, because so much material was covered that I filled the first notebook. Carrying a binder instead wouldn't have helped. For one course, I quite literally filled up around 8 or 10 notebooks. That's a couple linear FEET of notes. (this is very much a learning style thing... words need to go in my ears and out my hands, or I don't remember them)
At present, electronic textbooks aren't advanced enough to work effectively in all areas of study. Chemistry, biology and math are particular problems due to the notation needed. I've been thrilled to use Project Gutenberg texts in place of the good old Riverside Shakespeare tho, and there's tons of foreign language resources available online.
As far as leaving textbooks in your locker... that presumes you have a class schedule where you can. If there's a 2 minute break between classes and you end up with 7th period lunch (out of a 9 period day), chances are there's never going to be a time to swap out books.
There's a balance to be struck, though. Back pain is just as easily caused by not exercising enough as by improperly carrying too heavy things. You don't want your kid to grow up physically weak.
The big one is get a backpack and not a satchel. You're doing yourself no favours if you don't balance the load.
I was a University student once. I know textbooks cost a lot of money. I lugged them back and forth during a really long commute home. And now I'm lucky in that I could afford to buy one for my kids, but not everyone is in the same financial situation. Especially if they were to adapt this to High school or even elementary school. That's all I was saying. It would be great to see them eventually weed out the need for textbooks (and I am a person who actually likes tactile items and writing old fashioned notes).
My nephews are lucky - they go to a school in Arizona which gives them two sets of books - one set for home and one set for school. I think there is some arrangement where they have to pay a small deposit for the extra set, but it gets refunded when they return them at the end of the year/semester.
Although it was "required," I simply refused to bring books to class in high school. I carried a purse with small individual notebooks for each class and switched sets at lunch time, so I only carried a few at once. I always did my homework and did well on tests, which made it difficult for teachers to argue about it. If they really needed me to look at a book in class, I would share with my neighbor. If any teacher had really put up a fuss, I would have asked my doctor to write a note. It's your body, don't let anyone demand that you carry a heavy load if you don't think it's a good idea.
Yeah, I pretty much just never took my books to class when I was in school. I'd have a paperback of whatever we were reading in english class, MAYBE a textbook if I knew for certain we would be using it that day, a pad of paper, and one of those accordion folders to keep any handouts in. The rare teacher that had specific requirements for how I organized my stuff, I just ignored, and since they weren't generally stupid enough to build it into their grading system, I'd just get their special notebook set up for the one day at the beginning of the year when they checked it off, then scrapped it and used my system the rest of the year. For the most part, I think maybe I just had good teachers who understood the book thing--class time was for teachers to lecture and assign collaborative student activities/projects, while books could easily be read outside of class in order to inform what you are doing in class and weren't necessary in the classroom (except in literary discussions in English class, where you cite passages to defend your argument).
Now I just carry a purse with a bottle of water, wallet, and my smartphone. I really don't need more than that, and it's easy on the shoulder.