It’s four o’clock and you just got home from a long day at school. You kick off your shoes and grab a snack from the fridge. Finally, you get to the part that you have been waiting for the whole day. Slowly, you slide your backpack off, your aching shoulders cry their thanks. Immediately you feel three inches taller. You feel like you could fly off the ground. You think you must have the heaviest backpack in the world.
You’re not alone.
“I’m happy I’m only carrying this much,” said Tuval Vaknin. Vaknin hands me his backpack in demonstration. It’s definitley heavier than mine. “I haven’t weighed it lately but I think that it’s between twenty and twenty-five pounds.” Vaknin says that he thinks his backpack is “above average” in terms of weight.
According to Consumer Reports, the weight of your backpack should be between 10 to 20 per cent of your body weight. Their findings showed that children are carrying the correct amount of weight in elementary school, but when they hit middle school, the numbers go up. The average weight of a 6th grader’s backpack is 17% of their body weight. The article also stated that there were 7600 hospital treated injuries that were associated with backpacks in 2004.
So much of this physical stress early in life can lead to consequences. According to WebMD, heavy backpacks can cause the back to “lurch forward”. No published reports have been able to link the weight to more serious problems. Yet.*
It’s cool, it’s fashionable, all the popular kids are doing it. No, not marijuana, single shoulder backpack wearing. This will ruin your shoulders. It’s bad enough that students are carrying such large loads on two shoulders. To put all that strain on one side can cause your spine to curve to the left or right.
So how much are you carrying? I wondered the same thing. To start my experiment, I took a scale and had students passing in the hall weigh their backpacks. I only took the weight of the backpack and the grade of the subject. I later compiled the data and took the average for each grade. Thirty-three people were surveyed. The results are as follows.
| Grade | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| Average Weight (lbs) |
16.58 | 20 | 18 | 18 |
In order to keep to the 10% of body weight rule stated above, the average freshmen body weight would need to be 165.8 pounds, for sophomores 200 pounds, and for juniors and seniors 180 pounds. The average student backpack weight is 18.145 pounds.
So what can you do? Carry less? That’s not always an option. Teachers assign a lot of work. Sometimes you need to lug textbooks from class to class. Try making a Monday, Wednesday, Friday binder and a Tuesday, Thursday, Friday binder. Spend a few minutes in the evening to organize your stuff. Leave the work that you know you won’t need at home. Follow these steps and your back and shoulders will thank you forever.
