CNN - The toilet has long been a sanctuary to catch up on some light reading and, for the harried parent, a spot for some rare “me time.” But the amount of toilet time has become a more pressing medical issue as people shift from reading physical books and magazines to endlessly scrolling on their smartphones.
There are consequences to sitting longer than we used to on the toilet: People are reporting a higher rate of hemorrhoids when they bring their smartphones to the bathroom, according to a new study in PLOS One.
Hemorrhoids are groups of veins in the rectum and outside the anus that can swell and enlarge due to increased pressure, which can create itchiness, discomfort, pain and bleeding.
This new research provides concrete evidence of what many have long suspected: People lose track of time in the bathroom when they have their phones, said Dr. Trisha Pasricha, the study’s senior author, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
“The entire business model of these social media apps is to distract us, make us lose track of time and addict us to the algorithm,” Pasricha said. “We’re just now understanding how much smartphones impact lots of other factors in our lives.”
...Sixty-six percent of survey respondents reported regularly using their smartphones on the toilet. Those who did spent significantly more time on the loo than people who left their smartphones outside the bathroom. About 54% of respondents reported using their phones to read news, while about 44% spent their time on social media.
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