A Chinese teenager suffered the fright of his life when he woke up one day with no feeling in his body due to a habit that is becoming more and more common.

Like many youths his age, Xiao Dong, a 19-year-old third-year student at a university in Quanzhou, China’s Fujian province, spent a lot of time looking down at his phone, but this summer, the consequences of his daily habit became life-threatening. After getting a summer job washing dishes and wiping tables with his head bent forward for hours on end, the pressure on the blood vessels near his spine became too much, as he also spent most of his free time looking down at his phone, playing video games and browsing on social media platforms. At first, he started experiencing numbness in his neck, arms, and legs, but on July 30, he woke up with no feeling at all in his legs and could not move.