Text walking doesn't increase your risk of tripping: research

You would expect that texting while walking would increase your risk of tripping - researchers however found otherwise.

According to research, published in PloS One, your gait changes significantly if you text and walk at the same time.

"Thirty participants completed three randomised, counter-balanced walking tasks over a course during: (1) normal walking (control), (2) texting and walking, and (3) texting and walking whilst being cognitively distraction via a standard mathematical test performed while negotiating the obstacle course,"  according to the study.

"While one might infer that these alterations in gait might increase the risk for tripping, our surrogate analysis (i.e., barrier contacts) showed no significant differences between any treatment conditions," the researchers said.

How could this be? Well, those changes in gait basically meant that people were going a bit slower and more carefully than they otherwise would.

"Our primary findings show that TXT (responding to standardised texting questions on their own phone) and COG (completing a mental mathematics quiz (AB Math Lite 5.3) on an iPhone) significantly shorten step length, reduce step frequency, lengthen double phase support and increase obstacle clearance height. "

Which means they very slowly didn't fall on their backsides, which we suspect is the real reason the research was published with all sorts of graphs rather than a viral YouTube video.