You only went in for a minute. You sit down, unlock your phone, check one message, watch one video, read half an article about something you'll never think about again. Then your legs start to tingle, and you realise you've been sitting there for twenty minutes. Nobody talks about it, but almost everybody does it. So how much time actually disappears in there?
How long it should take
Here's a strange fact from physics. Researchers who filmed 23 animals going to the toilet found that mammals, from cats to elephants, empty their bowels in about 12 seconds on average. Their bodies are very different sizes, but a slippery layer of mucus keeps the time roughly the same.
Humans aren't zoo animals, and nobody needs to time themselves with a stopwatch. But the point stands: the actual business is quick. Doctors who treat these problems usually suggest that a visit should take no more than about five minutes. In the words of the gastroenterologist who led the study below, if nothing has happened in five minutes, it isn't going to. Get up and try again later.
What the phone does to the clock
In 2025, doctors in Boston asked 125 adults waiting for a routine colonoscopy about their toilet habits, then compared the answers with what the camera actually found. Two out of three said they use their phone on the toilet. The most common activities were reading the news (about half) and social media (more than four in ten).
The phone made a clear difference to the time: 37% of phone users usually stayed longer than five minutes, compared with just 7% of people who left the phone outside. That's about five times as many.
There's a reason it doesn't feel that long. A phone is very good at making time vanish, and we're poor judges of how much of it we spend there. A 2021 review that compared what people said about their screen time with what their devices actually recorded found the two only loosely match. Most of us simply don't know how many minutes we spend on our phones, and the toilet minutes are the easiest ones to miss.
Adding it up
No study has measured exactly how many hours a year people spend scrolling on the toilet. You'll see impressive figures online, but they usually come from polls run by companies that sell bathroom products, so we've left them out. Instead, here's some simple arithmetic you can check yourself. It's an illustration, not a research finding:
If your phone adds 5 extra minutes to one visit a day, that's about 30 hours a year, more than a whole day and night. Over ten years, it comes to almost two weeks. If it's 10 extra minutes, double everything.
Thirty hours is roughly a long weekend away, a few novels or a beginner's language course. None of this means the time is "wasted." A quiet minute alone can be genuinely restful. The question is whether you're choosing it, or whether the phone is choosing it for you.
It's not only about time
The Boston study had a second finding that made headlines. After taking into account age, weight, exercise, fibre in the diet and straining, people who used their phone on the toilet were 46% more likely to have haemorrhoids (swollen veins around the bottom that can itch, hurt or bleed).
The likely reason is simple. A toilet seat leaves your bottom unsupported, so the longer you sit, the more blood pools in those veins. Interestingly, straining itself wasn't linked to haemorrhoids in this study. Sitting for a long time seemed to matter more.
Two honest caveats. The study was small and looked at one moment in time, so it can't prove that phones cause haemorrhoids. And the wider evidence is mixed: a large 2021 study from Turkey also found more phone use among people with haemorrhoids, while a 2025 study from another Turkish hospital found the opposite. What the studies agree on is that sitting on the toilet for a long time is worth avoiding, whatever keeps you there.
Why the toilet is such a scroll trap
The toilet is one of the few places where nobody expects anything from you. It feels like a small, private, permitted break, and that makes it the perfect moment for the phone to step in. The pattern is the same one behind many habits: a cue (sitting down, a moment of boredom), a routine (unlock, scroll) and a reward (something new, every few seconds). Repeat it every day and it runs on autopilot. You don't decide to scroll for twenty minutes. You just never decide to stop.
Key numbers
- 12 seconds is roughly how long mammals, from cats to elephants, take to empty their bowels. Yang et al., 2017
- 5× as many phone users as non-users stayed on the toilet longer than five minutes (37% versus 7%). Ramprasad et al., 2025
- 30 hours a year is what 5 extra minutes a day adds up to. Our own calculation
The bottom line
Scrolling on the toilet isn't a crime, and it's one of the most common phone habits there is. But it quietly turns a two-minute visit into a ten- or twenty-minute one, and that time adds up to days each year, along with a body that wasn't designed to sit on a toilet that long. The fix is refreshingly easy, and you can test it tomorrow morning:
Leave the phone outside the door. It's the simplest change and the most effective one. If that feels like too much, try it just for the first visit of the day.
Use the five-minute rule. If nothing is happening, get up and come back later.
Go when your body asks, not when you finally have a free moment.
Help things along with fibre, water and movement, so you don't need long visits in the first place.
Quick self-check
- Do you take your phone into the toilet almost every time?
- Do you often stay on the toilet after you've finished?
- Have your legs ever gone numb or tingly while you were scrolling?
- Do you sometimes go to the toilet mainly to get a few minutes with your phone?
- Would leaving your phone outside the door feel uncomfortable?
- If you added up your toilet minutes, would the total surprise you?
This is not a diagnosis. It's a way to notice your own patterns.
If you notice blood when you go, ongoing pain, or a change in your bowel habits that lasts more than a few weeks, see a doctor. Most causes are common and very treatable, but bleeding should always be checked.
References
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (2025, September). Swipe left on scrolling: How smartphones may increase hemorrhoid risk. bidmc.org
- Parry, D. A., Davidson, B. I., Sewall, C. J. R., Fisher, J. T., Mieczkowski, H., & Quintana, D. S. (2021). A systematic review and meta-analysis of discrepancies between logged and self-reported digital media use. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(11), 1535–1547. doi:10.1038/s41562-021-01117-5
- Ramprasad, C., et al. (2025). Smartphone use on the toilet and the risk of hemorrhoids. PLOS One, 20(9), e0329983. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0329983
- Yang, P. J., LaMarca, M., Kaminski, C., Chu, D. I., & Hu, D. L. (2017). Hydrodynamics of defecation. Soft Matter, 13(29), 4960–4970. doi:10.1039/C6SM02795D
- Yazkan, C., Şahin, S., Yavuz, B., Mammadov, A., Özcan, Ö., & Dere, Ö. (2025). Toilet behaviors and lifestyle factors in anorectal diseases: A cross-sectional analysis. Frontiers in Surgery, 12, 1683286. doi:10.3389/fsurg.2025.1683286
- Zarbaliyev, E., et al. (2021). The relationship between smartphone use in the lavatory and hemorrhoidal disease. Turkish Journal of Colorectal Disease, 31(3), 217–223. doi:10.4274/tjcd.galenos.2020.2020-6-4
About these sources
These 6 sources were published between 2017 and 2025. Reliability: 1 high, 5 medium. High means a review of many studies, a large experiment or long-term study, or official data checked in the original. Medium means useful evidence with real limits, such as a small sample, a single point in time, or no peer review. How we choose and check sources.
Educational guidance, not diagnosis or medical care.