> 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.

https://youtu.be/cXgg607wuis?t=35 (Breaking Bad 'Hank Figures it Out')

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.

Reading on the pot is a time-honoured tradition.

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.

The Dr. Bronner's label rabbit hole was a common occurrence.

That's some crazy info on that soap bottle.

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.

Or those people who took magazines to the bathroom to read.

But they all took a back seat from the one thing that followed them around!

> Yet, lo and behold, we survived!

The article isn't claiming it'll kill you...

I used to take news papers and magazines and sometimes still do. So yes it’s perfectly fine.

That is a real phenomena for a chunk of the population but I'm trying to understand what it is. Is it ADHD?

We learned Finish from the back of shampoo bottles.

Don’t forget the SEARS catalogue

https://xkcd.com/1227/

my family's main study there used to be the TV program which came in - hard to believe now - weekly printed magazines.

Stack of old magazines - readers digest etc

I read magazines or books.

> Yet, lo and behold, we survived!

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).

Also in all sorts of languages. Czech, Slovak, Estonian, French, you name it. A gentle introduction into comparative linguistics :D

I totally still do this! The random nonsense and just lists of ingredients make me relaxed.

Oh yeah, I used to get a huge dopamine rush reading what was in my toothpaste.

Instagram feeds and not toothpaste tubes people.

That brings back so many good memories that were forgotten.

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!

pre-AI I recall a little gag website based on that in ~2013!

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.

I read about ancient greek mithology

Right. I actually do the inverse of the OP's advice. As much as possible, pooping is the ONLY time I use the phone.

If the only time you budget for mindfulness is a couple minutes on the toilet, you're doing it wrong.

You underestimate the amount of time I spend pooping.

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.

I went directly to the comments like a true phone addict

Most upvoted comment in a long time. Probably.

Does taking a piss count?

you called me out

We address the vulnerability by retreating to a private space. The phones come out just to address boredom. Sitting on the toilet is boring.

> 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.

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

Yes, the only other closest parallel is maybe giving birth without reducing the intensity of an experience of child birth…

> pooping is this uniquely vulnerable, sensitive time for humans

GRRM chose that vulnerable moment to kill off a character.

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:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vgf4m

I remember Nintendo doing a commercial about that!

that explains Dr Bronner's branding

There are dozens of us!

Yes yes I know this contains sodium laureth sulfate what else have you got?

Flip side: sitting too long on the toilet increases hemorrhoid risk. [0]

Not having a distraction doesn’t mean a person needs to strain.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12407481/

? What? A healthy colon and diet usually do not need to strain or rush. Just sit and poop. like 1min tops.

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

TIL that in the past, I definitely would have died while pooping.

Odd that sloths spend their life in the trees except when they climb down to have a crap.

Eridians have figured out the solution for vulnerable moments: I watch, you shit.

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.

https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374223-Wild-geese-by-Mary-J-Oli...

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.

I’m confused, doesn’t your toilet bowl already do that for you?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/despite-accessing-us...

6 mins? Maybe with a squatty potty and if I'm lucky. Otherwise it's almost always 15-25min for me, not sure why, it just takes time.

> be done in max 6mins

this has a very "tell me you haven't had kids yet without telling me" energy to it, in opinion at least.

Right! If you spend enough time in there to be reading you didn't actually need a shit.

That's the third reason given in the article (hemorrhoids == piles).

Ah, yes, the engagement-maximizing shampoo bottle ingredient list

It's one of the most tranquil parts of the day, and a time out from busier things. What's the rush?

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.

God forbid a thought might form!

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…

Is it really possible that yours splatters as much as that? Couldn't you wear a polythene kilt?

ShatGPT?

Using your phone to do work even in the bathroom is a strange brag