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Analyzed from 3597 words in the discussion.
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#toilet#phone#bathroom#don#reading#read#phones#https#need#more
Discussion Sentiment
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Discussion (163 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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')
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.
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.
That's some crazy info on that soap bottle.
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).
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.
Instagram feeds and not toothpaste tubes people.
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.
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...
But then you kind of dove into the deepend there. Spy devices, 1984, etc. I think a more tempered approach is useful here
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.
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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vgf4m
GRRM chose that vulnerable moment to kill off a character.
My more general hypothesis is that generally reading interesting stuff is too engaging, and the brain needs to relax "just right".
The ingredients have to be understandable by non English speakers – so water is out.
As for salt which one?
My parents leave copies of The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Nat Geo in their bathroom.
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 poem made me think of hers.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374223-Wild-geese-by-Mary-J-Oli...
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.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8416428/
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.
And of course, sleeping. ;)
But there is something to this. Intuitive ideas come to you in the quiet moments.
Precisely the reason I stopped using phone in the toilet.
My guests stay for ages.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/despite-accessing-us...
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...
People would read magazines, newspapers, nearby bottles of things, etc.
The phone part is irrelevant.
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.