If I were to pull a face while our local church bells rang, my great-gran cautioned, my face would remain contorted forever. I never got to ask gran if her mother rode a bicycle.

In the late 19th century, medical journals discouraged women from cycling lest they suffer from a permanent case of “bicycle face”. Some physicians argued that the strained expression of a lady struggling to keep her balance on a bicycle, coupled with the physical exertion involved, could lead to facial disfigurement, exhaustion, insomnia, headaches, and depression.

While doctors have long abandoned warnings of “bicycle face”, cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists now scare the vain with “phone face”. Mobile phones are blamed for sagging jaws, double chins, horizontal neck creases, “Tech Neck”, crow’s feet, “marionette lines”, wrinkled foreheads, exhaustion, insomnia, headaches, and depression.

If my great grandmother were alive today, she would be far more worried about my smartphone than those thundering church bells. And were she to ask: “Why the long face?”, I would be able to blame my phone with the knowledge that the medical community can back me up.