Using your phone in the bathroom? Think twice.

The modern phones has blurred all the lines, in all the ways. For example:

*What is rest and what is work? It’s all both/and.

*When are we by ourselves and when are we “with others?” It’s hard to differentiate.

*What’s a private activity and what is a public one? Tricky to tell now.

I love this one, though, that relates to our body and the device itself: “It seems no boundary exists to separate hand and phone. This includes the bathroom.”

Well put.

The vast majority of modern humans use their phones in the bathroom, and many of us use it while we’re actually on the toilet.

On the one hand, using the phone in the bathroom seems reasonable and even logical.

For one thing, for decades people have read magazines or books while “doing their business;” what’s so different about a phone? After all, it’s the primary vehicle through which the modern human consumes information.

For another, using the bathroom is a moment of privacy and regroup, a pause amidst activities and a sort of interval between one thing and the next. Doesn’t it make sense that people would there use the main tool available to them - to list-check, organize, communicate?

And finally, the privacy of toileting creates a little bubble where we’re alone with our guard necessarily down, which conveys an ethos of self-care. If checking texts or scrolling social media for a moment can quell the go-go-go of our day and allow us to exhale for a minute - why wouldn’t we? (This is especially true for busy moms trying so keep their head above water in a chaotic household. Ask me how I know.)

On the other hand, using the phone in the bathroom is kind of gross.

Evidently phones are actually dirtier than toilets (some studies say up to 10 times so… because people rarely clean them), and right now there’s fecal matter on one in six phones in the world. This means you could be encountering germs like salmonella, E. Coli and C. Difficile. As one article indelicately (but candidly) describes it, such exposure to germs “could happen when you wipe yourself, touch the flush handle or door lock and then touch the phone all prior to washing your hands. Or, of course, without washing your hands at all.” Yuck.

Health concerns don’t stop with the e. coli, either. People who scroll on the throne often stay there longer than they need to, and this can increase the risk for hemorrhoids. And what about the health of your phone? About one in five people have dropped their phone in the toilet (whoops).

Embarrassment is another factor here. Remember the Supreme Court conference call that happened live, during the pandemic, when the lawyer presenting his case failed to mute his toilet flush? That’s tough on the old dignity. Or what about when people come out of a stall texting, and run into someone they know?

Research shows that between 70% and 90% of people use their phones in the bathroom. So we’ve more or less all done it, either occasionally or routinely. And I’m not here to mock this practice or tell you that you must keep your phone out of the bathroom.

I do want to ask this question, though, and ultimately I think it’s the biggest one:

what are we losing when we, as a society, become so habituated to using our devices that we routinely do so while we’re in the bathroom, or even on the toilet?

I asked myself this question last week when I pulled my phone out of my purse to check it in the bathroom after a matinee I’d just watched with my kids. I hadn’t been on it for more than two hours, after all. What had I missed? I felt the need to check in.

Then I caught myself. Why am I on my phone in the stall? Do I really need to be? Do I even actually want to be?

Using the bathroom is among the most human of our human moments. And here I was, automating and digitizing that process. Here I was, using my “best-loved” crutch to distract…. or be overly plugged-in to the mundane. Here I was, reinforcing my own addictive tendencies, telling my brain that yes, I really did need to check it whenever (literally) I had a quiet moment. Was this really necessary?

And for me, the answer was no. It was the week before New Year’s, and I resolved not to bring my phone into the bathroom with me anymore. I decided: be a human, in all the ways, and use the bathroom without a phone. Take this moment. Think your thoughts. The text thread or social media check-in can wait.

What do you think about using the phone in the bathroom? (PS. Check my 1-page cheat sheet, 5 Reason to Not Use Your Phone in the Bathroom, for a thumbnail on this!)

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