> Back when we lived without phones, we used to read instruction labels on all and any household cleaning products that were stored in the bathroom.
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.
I'm certain that national geographic only exists in bathrooms. That's the reason we have a subscription. . . And my aunts and uncles and parents and cousins.
On shark tank, this couple had a product which was basically a sand timer for pooping. Some sharks didn't invest in it because they thought pooping was one of the few times people get peace and let them do what they want.
Personally, I just took a book in with me. (I thought everyone did, but apparently not.)
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.
Heh yeah, as a kid/young adult I also stored all my strategy game manuals in the bathroom, back when they used to contain actual information and helpful stuff.
My family had dedicated bathroom reading that sat on the top of every toilet cistern. Usually something like a Far Side comic collection or an "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader."
I used to take my laptop or Nokia N810 (remote shell over Wi-Fi with physical keyboard) with me to the bathroom. Nowadays there's cyberdecks, e-readers, ...
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.
I don't know about you guys, but I kept a stack of books in the bathroom. I managed to get through a lot of books two or three pages at a time. I don't even know why I stopped.
It might also have to do with how long someone tends to take. I tend to have a pretty slow metabolism and only need to defecate a couple times a week (to preempt any armchair diagnoses from people who think this is weirdly infrequent, every doctor I've had has always said this isn't a huge deal), so when I do, it tends to be in larger amounts. I've also found that it's better for me to take it slow and not strain as much, so sometimes I end up being on the toilet for more than just a couple minutes, which means that having something to do is nice.
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.
And depending on the person it can also change depending on diet and mixing microbiomes. Back when I lived with roommates my frequency changed based on who I lived with to some extent, matching closer to their frequency without changing diet (since I was weight training my diet was controlled and I didn’t eat their food).
Now living permanently with a spouse it has settled on a higher frequency than I remember before moving out on my own. Weird stuff.
That's wild, my frequency has remained pretty consistent through my life, although I did have a couple years where somehow 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.
Not really a constipation but if out of nowhere I notice what I didn't #2 in a while what means I have a quite severe cold incoming - but yet without symptoms.
> 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.
I don't drink at all, and I honestly don't go out very much ever (including back them, probably very much related to the not drinking thing), so I wasn't consistently having the same thing to eat over the weekend. Interestingly, this did coincide with the period where I was going out to a specific event every Monday night, which is the only reason I remembered; I would be thrilled when it managed to come about during the workday rather than in the evening when I was out.
Sounds like I'm still in the range then! Interesting that it varies so much. I've heard some people say (or I guess imply) that they do it daily, and it's so different from my experience that I've always wondered which way is more "normal". I guess both are!
I think it's just "I don't want to just sit there." I don't have ADHD, but I do want to read more or less incessantly. Why should potty time be any different?
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.
”Ei saa peittää” is forever imprinted in me! One of the first memes I think I came across growing up. I remember both kids and grownups spontaneously just saying it.
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).
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.
The Dutch have a birthday calendar in the toilet room. And you can use the inspection shelf of the toilet to check for problems in your diet. Plenty of activities to do!
Same, on the golden throne is where 98% of my phone time is being spent, the other 2% is having to hold up the phone towards my hear to do that annoying "talk to another human being" thing. Otherwise during a normal day I barely touch my phone.
The reason we have declining birth rates is phones.
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.
> The reason we have declining birth rates is phones
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.
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.
Trained on short form gratification loops? Just the opposite. They're the path of least resistance. It was thermodynamically inevitable that short form content would dominate.
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.
Your great great grandparents didn't effectively get fined for having each child. It was quite the opposite.
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.
I would assume that they mean your great great grandparents benefited greatly by having kids because it brought in more labor while it mostly just cost food. These days there are tons of extra costs to having kids that didn't exist in the past and none of those costs are offset by their labors.
We’re reaching further into the past than great great grandparents to get to the large families for farming but sure. Calling it a “fine” to have kids is really bizarre framing though.
Pooping is interesting. Having a toddler reminded me how pooping is this uniquely vulnerable, sensitive time for humans. I think a lot of us use books/phones/etc to distract ourselves from a sensorily intense activity. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, just noting it.
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.
You are not alone! Starting with Freud and the anal stage, many psychologists have concerned themselves and linking this not with sexual but with mortal aspect of the human condition
And yet the toilet is one of the most connected places in the house. I love this BBC "Thinking Allowed" podcast episode on toilets that makes the point powerfully:
Are you trying to let people know you're a generator of superior fecal matter? If so, there's no need to apologize for it. Carry that stuff with pride.
Everyone's gut is different, but one minute isn't unreasonably short, especially if you have something like a bidet for fast cleaning afterwards. Are you sure you're not constipated?
Sure, but the actual splash act just takes a minute at most, and usually about 10 seconds for me. I don't understand how you can have time to read anything.
Ages ago, I let my partner borrow my first iPad after I'd upgraded. She'd take it into the bathroom. I never touched it because of that and I probably cleaned it when she gave it back to me.
Yeah, exactly this. Once you have a toddler you realize there is an inherent desire to be alone while pooping. There is a sort of shame about this. Always Sunny made a joke about this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TFqzjdk5XPs
Since I can remember I wonder why dogs do that but it had never occurred to me that that was the reason. What the hell. How many other _obvious_ things I've been blind my whole life
Oh, thank you, what a lovely choice of text. I wonder if your parents meant for you to read it?
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.
Back in the day, old newspapers were used as toilet paper. It was a ceremony for my late cousin to cut the newspapers into blocks and neatly pack them in the outdoor toilet. You’d have a choice of some water from a bottle, and the old newspapers. A company of a few flies and no light. But when you went in there while the sun was out, reading whatever was on the cutouts was the obvious thing to do. Not just stare at the cracks in the wooden door in front of you.
Pro tip: send the photo to spammy overseas recruiters, bonus if you add the photo in a .docx with a password. then when they call you asking for the password, tell them over the phone so you can hear their reaction when they see it.
You want to train kids from a young age not to spend a long time on the toilet, which reading encourages. It consistently leads to hemorrhoids. That's just a fact.
> You want to train kids from a young age not to spend a long time on the toilet, which reading encourages. It consistently leads to hemorrhoids. That's just a fact.
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.
then it is even worse than I feared! they are both worsening or increasing their own chances of hemorrhoids AND role modeling for their kids that spending a long time on the toilet is OK.
I don't believe in planning when to stare at the wall. I just do it when I feel like it - whenever - sometimes family members are around. Be reasonably spontaneous - you'll calibrate on you're own. Don't be afraid. Breathe, baby!
Another reset tip I've implemented to great success is to drive in complete silence. No music, no podcast, no radio.
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
Even with adequate fiber and correct Asian positioning, it can take at least five minutes to empty. Granted, I won't use the phone if I need to focus during this time.
This is the thing I've become increasingly radicalized about. I built an app (link below if you're curious, it's $5 [1]) to cure my particular brand of phone addiction.
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.
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?)
Surely whatever is aerosolised gets over your body and clothing too - so your phone would be less dirty than the rest of you, except the parts you washed with soap.
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.
> it’s nasty … add fecal matter … you really think when you poop it just lands neatly in the bowl and nothing goes in the air?
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…
Don't use your phone while you poop if you're a phone addict like this person and their demographic, and you need to create an artificial excuse for you to stop constantly touching it.
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.
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.
I bet there too was some obscure newspaper column that advised against that.
Yet, lo and behold, we survived!
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')
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.
Edit: those books are basically the print version of reddit's front page of posts from r/interestingasfuck, r/todayilearned, r/MadeMeSmile etc.
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.
That's some crazy info on that soap bottle.
But they all took a back seat from the one thing that followed them around!
The article isn't claiming it'll kill you...
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.
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.
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).
Instagram feeds and not toothpaste tubes people.
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.
If the only time you budget for mindfulness is a couple minutes on the toilet, you're doing it wrong.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
GRRM chose that vulnerable moment to kill off a character.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vgf4m
The ingredients have to be understandable by non English speakers – so water is out.
As for salt which one?
Not having a distraction doesn’t mean a person needs to strain.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12407481/
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.
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"
https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html
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...
And of course, sleeping. ;)
But there is something to this. Intuitive ideas come to you in the quiet moments.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/despite-accessing-us...
My more general hypothesis is that generally reading interesting stuff is too engaging, and the brain needs to relax "just right".
Get in, take your dump, be done in max 6mins, get up. Don't strain.
it really is the solution in 99% of cases. The vast majority of people get nowhere near enough fiber
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.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8416428/
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.
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
My guests stay for ages.
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 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.
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.