Remember when bathrooms had magazine racks? Those quaint little baskets filled with year-old Reader's Digests? Well, we traded them for smartphones, and now we're paying for it with our butts.

A new study in PLOS One just confirmed what your proctologist has been trying to tell you: scrolling on the toilet is literally giving people hemorrhoids. Researchers surveyed 125 adults getting colonoscopies and found that regular toilet phone users had a 46% higher risk of hemorrhoids than people who leave their devices outside the bathroom.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Two-thirds of people now bring their phones to the bathroom. Over half are reading news while sitting there, and 44% are doom-scrolling through social media. The result? Phone users spend five times longer on the toilet than non-phone users. Thirty-seven percent of smartphone users camp out for over five minutes, compared to just 7% of people who go phoneless.

Dr. Trisha Pasricha, the study's senior author and a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, puts it bluntly: "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."

How It Happens

Here's the uncomfortable truth about why this matters: sitting on a toilet isn't like sitting on a chair. That open seat compresses your rectal area and positions your bottom lower than normal sitting. "When you're sitting on an open toilet bowl, you have no pelvic floor support," Pasricha explains. Blood pools in the rectum, veins swell, and hello hemorrhoids - those itchy, painful, sometimes bleeding reminders that you spent too long watching TikToks.

The posture problem makes it worse. Dr. Hima Ghanta, a colorectal surgeon at Holy Name Medical Center, notes that people hunch over their phones, which is terrible for elimination. Your rectum and anus naturally curve from the colon, and hunching makes that angle worse. Our ancestors who squatted to poop didn't have these problems. We invented the toilet, added smartphones, and created the perfect hemorrhoid storm.

Interestingly, the study found it's not about straining or constipation. Phone users weren't more constipated than non-users; they just sat there longer. "It's passive smartphone use that causes these hemorrhoidal cushions to become engorged and bulge," Pasricha says. You're literally just sitting there, mindlessly scrolling, while gravity and pressure do their damage.

Younger Patients Are Paying The Price

The study only looked at people 45 and older, but doctors are seeing hemorrhoids in increasingly younger patients. Dr. Sandhya Shukla, a New Jersey gastroenterologist, says younger people are showing up with hemorrhoid issues, and while diet and obesity play roles, toilet scrolling is a major contributor.

Think about it - younger generations are practically fused to their phones. If a third of middle-aged people are spending five-plus minutes on the toilet with their devices, what's happening with twenty-somethings who've never known life without smartphones?

The Fix Is Stupidly Simple

Stop bringing your phone to the bathroom. Gastroenterologists recommend three to five minutes max on the toilet. Not ten, not fifteen, definitely not the twenty-minute Instagram spiral you fell into last Tuesday. Three minutes. If nothing's happening, get up and try later.

Pasricha suggests checking in with yourself after two TikToks. Still not productive? Time to abort mission. Dr. Ghanta puts it perfectly: "There are many things in life we're rushing to get through, and we often say to slow down and take time to smell the roses. But not on the toilet."

If you absolutely must bring your phone (because let's face it, some of us are beyond help), set a timer. Three minutes. When it goes off, you're done, whether your bowels agree or not.

The irony here is painful - literally. We've turned the one place where our bodies naturally tell us when we're done into a scrolling station where we ignore every signal to get up. Our phones have invaded every moment of our lives, and now they're literally becoming a pain in the butt.

The Bottom Line

Look, nobody wants to talk about hemorrhoids. But if you're one of those people treating your bathroom like a private office, reading this article while sitting on the toilet right now (you know who you are), maybe it's time to reconsider. Your hemorrhoid-free future self will thank you.

The bathroom used to be a sanctuary from technology. Maybe it's time to make it one again. Your social media will still be there when you're done. Your rectal health, on the other hand, might not be if you keep this up.

Looking for stories that inform and engage? From breaking headlines to fresh perspectives, WaveNewsToday has more to explore. Ride the wave of what’s next.