Don't use your phone while you poop
nate.spot
nate.spot
I bet there too was some obscure newspaper column that advised against that.
Yet, lo and behold, we survived!
That said, I do also have ADHD, so maybe people who are "longer and slower" toiler-sitters like me without ADHD might be fine without a distraction.
Now living permanently with a spouse it has settled on a higher frequency than I remember before moving out on my own. Weird stuff.
> one of the days each week I'd do it would always be Monday, and I never had any explanation for why that was the case.
Social functions, a specific food or beverages (Friday drinking night? Not to the Monday though...) on some days, travel for some.
Wow, I forgot that I used to do this! And I'd puzzle over whether any ozone was left with all the CFCs being emitted.
But yes, the OP is very edgy take that totally ignores the existence of book/magazine baskets next to toilets. It's a huge plot point in Breaking Bad, for example.
https://youtu.be/cXgg607wuis?t=35 (Breaking Bad 'Hank Figures it Out')
Vince Gilligan truly made tv gold.
Many share houses, when I was a student, put the film calendar for the local art house cinema on the back of the toilet door. It was the accepted place for it.
Reading on the pot is a time-honoured tradition.
Just imagine, there was a person on #debian reading and taking a dump.
Just to reiterate: book good, e-reader bad. Phone good, smartphone bad. Scanning through a physical magazine good, doomscrolling TikTok bad.
Except it is about focused vs. diffuse mode of brain, and usually people underappreciate the latter. E.g. walking during a lunch break, thereby getting inspiration for work, is working. The same can be true for taking a shower, sporting, staring outside at the landscape or stars, or meditating. It will also empower your focused mode later on. And, the author's point seems to be a toilet break is a decent opportunity for this. I agree. On my previous job, I regularly sat for 10-15 min in late morning, and it inspired me. But you cannot force people to not take a device with them to toilet. I mean, unless you're working for NSA or something. Don't judge such, look at total performance / efficiency per hour instead. Or per USD spend on the employee.
As a former smoker, this is also what I appreciated about having a fag (in a time before smartphone and vape were common). Some missed the socializing. I hated that part. It seemed to be more like FOMO on gossip, little substance.
Edit: those books are basically the print version of reddit's front page of posts from r/interestingasfuck, r/todayilearned, r/MadeMeSmile etc.
That's some crazy info on that soap bottle.
Instagram feeds and not toothpaste tubes people.
The article isn't claiming it'll kill you...
For many of us Swedes this was the one of the first and few Finnish sentences we ever learnt (it means ”Do not cover” and was printed on electric panel heaters in the bathroom).
But they all took a back seat from the one thing that followed them around!
https://web.archive.org/web/20210612143916/http://backlabel....
Backlabel threw together a fake product name from a list and added in some warning symbols and various ingredient and instructions to give you some fake labels to read while you whizz away.
This is called survivorship bias. Sure, we survived—but that’s because you’re not including all of the bored people who died of reading instruction labels.
I really don't get this protective culture that seems so widespread in current times.
I'll state it plainly, your hands are clean before you start to wipe yourself. As long as you put your phone aside, on the counter for example, it's as clean as if reading in an easy chair.
And I'm doing it right now, reading this blog and this thread! Take that, blog author!
That shouldn't be the bar for most of what we do daily. We can also "survive" without doing any physical exercise. The question is: yes, we'll survive, but in which condition? i.e. is that healthy or not?
It's not the economy. People have overwhelmingly been historically poor. Our ancestors ate rotting and festering meat and they had plenty of kids. Your great great grandparents went through some shit. HN community demographics are the exception to the rule.
The problem is every man and woman is sucked into a phone. They're never bored. There's no need to plan for long term fulfillment in another person. Always just more dopamine. Settling down isn't good because we're trained on short form gratification loops.
The spy devices enforce conformance too. Nobody takes risks and parties. Looking foolish will be shared and shamed. People get sucked into these closed off hyper critical portals where everyone sees a highlight reel, questions themselves, and adapts to the performance culture status quo.
This is worse than either Brave New World or 1984.
It's an almost fitting handoff that our species goes into decline as the robots begin to take over. Our species can't be just scaffolding right? We're kind of doing our best to prove that we are.
But then you kind of dove into the deepend there. Spy devices, 1984, etc. I think a more tempered approach is useful here
You make some really good points, but I feel they are a result of a greed-pilled, mean-spirited and individualistic-to-the-point-of-self-harm culture we're all sadly living under rather than the underlying cause.
What are you talking about?
The USA didn't change things up considerably until the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
Not soon after, obviously ww2 and then the baby boom after that. The role of children in families changed hugely in the 20th century.
https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/a...
Real estate is too expensive and rent is too high and people don't want to raise a family in a tiny apartment where both people have to work long hours. Combined with the fear TV sold to people such that they have to hover over their children 24/7 for most of their lives.
Our peers in other countries can live with dirt floors, no climate control or running water, and tarp roofing. And they have no problem having kids. Until they get the smartphone (which is now starting to happen).
People have always had far less and had more children. The wealth you have now is a modern phenomenon and perhaps a bit of a flukish bubble.
Your own dopamine blindfold is a "minimum acceptable happiness threshold". It's distancing you from your underlying biology.
You don't have to live where you do. You don't have to send your kids to an expensive school. You don't have to buy expensive things, the latest fashion, the nicest car. You don't have to go to the expensive trips and festivals and restaurants. You don't have to keep up with the neighbors. You need very few things.
The dopamine loop put you there. Consumption, comparison, craving more. Algorithmically targeted.
US Live births per 1000 people from Macrotrends:
* 1960 - 22.70
* 1970 - 16.83
* 1980 - 14.99
* 1990 - 15.57
* 2000 - 14.18
* 2010 - 13.31
* 2020 - 11.99
* 2026 - 11.98
In the 30 years 1960 - 1990 which predate widespread adoption of mobile phones, we see a drop of ~7 live births per 1000 people.
In the 35 years since then (during which mobile phones have become ubiquitous) it has dropped by a further 3.5 live births per 1000 which is half the prior reduction.
If we look at US fertility rates the situation is even more dramatic. Births per woman:
* 1960 - 3.44
* 1970 - 2.34
* 1980 - 1.79
* 1990 - 1.96
* 2000 - 2.01
* 2010 - 1.98
* 2020 - 1.78
* 2026 - 1.79
The 30 years from 1960-1990 see a drop of almost 1.5 vs. a drop of about 0.2 in the 35 years since.
All of which is to say that the trend for declining birth rates predates mobile phone adoption, the biggest declines came prior to mobile phones being in widespread use. I've not researched the matter but my understanding is the primary drives in declining birth-rates are A) widespread availability of reliable birth control (the pill) and B)population wealth increases which tend to correlate quite strongly with the number of children a person has.
I don't discount phones having at least some impact, but seems highly unlikely that it's 'the' reason.
live births - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... fertility rate - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
It starts with access to tv, movies, leisure travel, and disposable income.
These things take you out of the evolutionary algorithm. Boredom, uncertainty, low dopamine, mind not preoccupied = having children.
We identified this trend already in DINKs, it just turns out biology's adversarial algorithm is far more widespread than just that one demographic pattern.
Smartphones are an accelerant.
If the only time you budget for mindfulness is a couple minutes on the toilet, you're doing it wrong.
I will say that playing my Nintendo DS on the toilet many years ago gave me hemorrhoids that still persist decades later. Don't camp on the toilet.
GRRM chose that vulnerable moment to kill off a character.
> I will say that playing my Nintendo DS on the toilet many years ago gave me hemorrhoids that still persist decades later. Don't camp on the toilet.
Right. People spending 30 minutes sitting on the toilet are clearly not feeling all that vulnerable. But, yeah. Don’t do that.
The ingredients have to be understandable by non English speakers – so water is out.
As for salt which one?
I’m very scared for most people I see online discussing BMs. People have some seriously twisted up guts and diets.
Restaurant: sit, eat, drink, chatter, coats, car, home.
Toilet: sit, splash, tinkle, read, wipe, wash, out.
Not having a distraction doesn’t mean a person needs to strain.
I've heard this claim before and I've suspected it came from "using phone one the toilet correlates to more time spent on the toilet, and more time spent on the toilet correlates to more hemorrhoids" without (I don't know the proper terminology here) analyzing how those two correlations relate.
This article/study asks the question that I've wondered about: Is sitting on a toilet while using the phone (and not really trying to poop) different in some important way from sitting on a bench/chair/whatever while using the phone? The article hypothesizes that the shape of the seat may be the important distinction.
AKA "sitting and waiting for a poop" vs "sitting and waiting for a bus".
Being older and reading it again, it's a beautiful sentiment and something that, I think, seeped into my subconscious and made me a better person.
My favorite line:
"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here"
My sister mentioned to me recently she has a print of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver on the back of her bathroom door. Your quotation made me think of her poem.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374223-Wild-geese-by-Mary-J-Oli...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/despite-accessing-us...
And of course, sleeping. ;)
But there is something to this. Intuitive ideas come to you in the quiet moments.
This has much less to do with taking a shit, than it does with sitting and quietly thinking to yourself.
This idea that you need to be constantly receiving some external input, and that just sitting and thinking is "boring", is really the primary symptom of internet brain damage.
Yes, there used to be National Geographic in the bathroom. and the people of that era weren't internet brain damaged, they were TV brain damaged.
The barrage of electronic media assaulting our senses has led to the biggest decline in individual human thought, ever.
So, go take a dump, and don't take your phone...
Get in, take your dump, be done in max 6mins, get up. Don't strain.
this has a very "tell me you haven't had kids yet without telling me" energy to it, in opinion at least.
Whoa, you can preach whatever you'd like, but let's not start inventing 'facts' to put down others.
I don't see 'time sitting on the stool' in our list of hemorrhoid risk factors. If, instead, you mean time straining at the stool, then yes: but the straining begets the reading activities, not the other way around.
it really is the solution in 99% of cases. The vast majority of people get nowhere near enough fiber
My more general hypothesis is that generally reading interesting stuff is too engaging, and the brain needs to relax "just right".
I took a five-day food safety course. They suggested using single use sanitizing wipes on your phone after visiting the WC.
Precisely the reason I stopped using phone in the toilet.
My parents leave copies of The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Nat Geo in their bathroom.
People would read magazines, newspapers, nearby bottles of things, etc.
The phone part is irrelevant.
I almost only use my phone when I poop, for flashcards. Guarantees me at least 5-10 minutes a day, and encourages me to relax (i.e. not strain) and not hurry the process. I might pick it up again at night when I'm getting tired to do more flashcards so I don't accidentally start something that will keep me up because I don't want to stop it in the middle.
So almost exclusively on the toilet and before bed (oh no!). My advice is don't smoke crack when you poop if you're a crackhead. In fact, any space you can open during which you are not smoking crack is good if you're a crackhead.
Also, sitting on the toilet doesn't give you hemorrhoids. Straining on the toilet gives you hemorrhoids. If your diet forces you to take a long time, you'll strain to hurry it up (or it may simply be unavoidable.) If you already have hemorrhoids, you'll take longer on the toilet (thereby associating long periods on the toilet with hemorrhoids.) Simply sitting on the toilet and letting things gently happen is not a bad thing, and also probably something that a person who is on their phone every minute of the day attending to beeps (and being filled with worry when it is not beeping) can't conceive of.
My guests stay for ages.
This way, I've turned my daily commute into a kind of meditation practice.
At first, you'll think about a million random things, and the 20 minute commute turns into a 40 minute commute mentally. Often you'll zone out and replay argument, write essays in your head. But if you try to relax and concentrate, after a while, you'll start to be more present and notice pedestrians, weird signs, potholes, restaurant you've never paid attention to, different types of overpasses, etc.
Another fun exercise: every once in a while, I flip a coin and if it lands head, I'll allow myself to listen to music, and the music becomes a treat again rather than random background noise! It's great and I've added so many more songs to my playlist because I actually notice them
For years, that was the only context in which I read Twitter, and that still holds true today for the various things that replaced Twitter for me.
The toilet is a fine place to peruse this website, too. It's pretty hard to do anything to excess if you only do it there.
Instead of trying to be present and think valuable thoughts while shitting, I recommend doing that while not shitting.
Make a habit of taking walks. Maybe learn to do mindfulness meditation. Clean the kitchen in silence.
There are really a lot of better options than locking yourself in a small room with only your thoughts and your feces.
I've been using my phone for probably ~1hr per day for the last 6 months and I've realized how many ills of our society today can be traced back to phones and social media. Political polarization, misinformation, mental illness, the loneliness epidemic, brain-rot - we'd be in a very different place if we could moderate our use of this technology more.
The thing I've come to realize is that when I look at my phone it's so boring now, and that's how it should be.
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrolless-feed-blocker/id67588...
Also, it's nasty. Check out how dirty your phone already is, then add fecal matter to that (you really think when you poop it just lands neatly in the bowl and nothing goes into the air?)
Would be interesting to see a study on this, not my instinct is mobile phone use whilst sitting on the toilet doesn't increase germ exposure in any measurable way.
Mine does, but I like to aim in the bowl. You’re not pooing in handstand pose, are you? No, wait, you’re right - just think - if you can smell it, you’re putting anus molecules directly in your nose. ;)
In all seriousness, thinking poop is in the air and getting on your phone is FUD. That’s not happening in detectable or meaningful amounts. If poop was in the air enough to get on your phone, then your phone would be the last of your worries, it would be everywhere, you’d already be breathing it, it would be on your face and clothes, it would be escaping the bathroom, and everyone everywhere would be sick. That’s not happening.
Touching bathroom surfaces is a bigger concern by orders of magnitude, and personal hygiene is much bigger than that by more orders of magnitude - the only thing you need to worry about in practice is what you touch and whether you wash your hands, and you can alleviate the majority of issues touching things by grabbing one square of TP to touch things with…
I do not do meditative "quiet reflection" on shitty toilet, I have nice space for that!
This is harder than ever - I've always got the urge (no pun intended to the original post) to start a new worktree, keep the agents unblocked, or write down a new idea.
I've started going on silent drives to help - 2 lane roads for an hour or so, just staring ahead and thinking about nothing and everything. I'll reward myself with a podcast on the way back from wherever my "could be anywhere" destination is.