For many, bathroom breaks double as screen time breaks – but doctors warn that toilet scrolling may not be harmless. Photo / Eric Helgas, The New York Times
The Times’ health reporters answer a reader’s question.
Q: I love browsing TikTok while I’m doing my business. Will this give me constipation or hemorrhoids?
A. For many, bathroom breaks double as screen time breaks. We text friends, read the news and scroll through social media. But doctors warn that the habit may not be harmless.
In a study published in September, for instance, researchers surveyed 125 colonoscopy patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston about their bathroom habits. Two-thirds said they had used a smartphone on the toilet at least once, with most saying they had done so at least once a week. The smartphone users also had a 46% increased risk for hemorrhoids – inflamed and swollen tissues and blood vessels in the lower rectum and anus.
“The next Reel, the next TikTok automatically starts playing”, causing people to linger on the toilet for too long, putting extended pressure on the rectal tissues, said Dr Trisha Pasricha, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a co-author of the study.
Although little other research has been conducted on the topic, doctors say that hemorrhoids may not be the only reason to think twice about bringing your phone onto the commode. Here’s what we know.
Compared with those who said they had never used a smartphone on the toilet, the researchers found that the smartphone users were much more likely to spend more than five minutes going to the bathroom.
Regularly lingering on the toilet for five minutes or more can harm the pelvic veins and muscles, Pasricha said. “The toilet bowl is just this open hole, and there’s nothing holding you up. There’s no counter pressure,” she said.
The connective tissue supporting rectal blood vessels may weaken over time, causing them to bulge and become engorged, Pasricha added.
There isn’t much research on the link between toilet time and constipation, and the new study did not find a relationship between the two. But it stands to reason that sitting on the toilet hunched over your phone could also make constipation more likely, said Dr Eamonn Quigley, the chair of gastroenterology at Houston Methodist.
When you’re bent over, you’re changing what experts call the anorectal angle, or the angle at which the rectum meets the anus. This makes the passage narrower and harder for stool to squeeze through, Quigley explained.
Extended toilet sitting – especially if you’re straining – may also increase the chance of rectal prolapse, which occurs when the rectum (the bottom part of the large intestine) collapses and protrudes through the anus, said Dr Lynn O’Connor, chief of the division of colon and rectal surgery at Mercy Medical Center and St Joseph Hospital in New York. Rectal prolapse is rare, affecting about one in 400 people, mostly women, she said, and straining on the toilet can make it more likely.
“That’s something that you definitely don’t want to have,” O’Connor said, as it can require surgery.
Bringing your phone into the bathroom can also be unhygienic, the experts said. Fecal matter – and the bacteria in it – can get on your hands while wiping, and you can transfer it to your phone. Flushing the toilet with the lid open can also cause fecal matter to spray into the air and land on your phone, O’Connor said.
Even if you wash your hands, you’ll get bacteria on your hands as soon as you touch your phone again, she explained.
It’s unclear how likely it is for this kind of contamination to cause illness – no studies have yet linked smartphones to infectious disease outbreaks – but regardless, “it’s gross”, Pasricha said.
Despite her findings, Pasricha said she doesn’t want anyone to feel that they should never bring their phone into the bathroom.
If looking at your phone helps you relax, it might make it easier for your bowel movement to pass, she said. But it’s best to sit up straight rather than crouch over your phone, Quigley advised. Or use a toilet stool to help align the body and facilitate bowel movements, he said.
Pasricha recommended following what she called the “five-minute rule” – ideally, avoid sitting on an open toilet seat for more than five minutes at a time. If five minutes regularly pass and you haven’t been able to go or are straining, you might want to consult a gastroenterologist, Pasricha said. Among other things, your stool might be too hard or you might be constipated.
And once you have done your business, get off the toilet, Pasricha said – or at least get dressed and close the lid if you want to sit and keep scrolling.
“Pull your britches up, put the toilet seat down and finish your TikTok,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Melinda Wenner Moyer
Photograph by: Eric Helgas
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