As smartphones continue to rewire our brains and erode our attention spans, it’s becoming more and more common for obsessive phone use to interrupt activities that we used to be able to enjoy without the need to check our devices. One glaring example: This man can’t even spend two hours on the toilet without looking at his phone.
Sad! Whatever happened to staying focused on the task at hand?
Like many casualties of modern technology, 36-year-old driving instructor Sammy Riverton has become a slave to his phone. This unfortunate reality is the most blatantly obvious when, mere seconds after putting it in his pocket to sit on the toilet for a few hours, his brain is already nagging at him to take it back out and check it in case he might be missing an important message or news story.
Despite knowing that he’s just sat down for what could be a quiet, contemplative two-hour toilet session, Sammy’s dopamine-depleted mind starts bargaining with him immediately, telling him, “Just check your Instagram notifications quick to see if anyone’s liked your recent post about your new car,” or, “Don’t want to miss any good deals on Facebook Marketplace.” No matter how much he tries to just be in the moment and enjoy a couple hours on the toilet the old-fashioned way, he invariably ends up reaching down into the pants that are bunched up around his ankles and pulling out his phone to do a Sudoku puzzle or check the news to see the latest crazy thing Trump did.
Sure, he might catch himself and try putting the phone back down in an attempt to finish out his next 90 minutes on the toilet without checking it again, but as the minutes tick by, the urge only gets stronger. “Just one quick peek to make sure I didn’t get any important texts,” he tells himself—and the next thing he knows, he’s watching a 45-minute viral video compilation of bears messing with people or doing the entirety of a New York Times Sunday crossword. Even if he attempts to practice proper bathroom phone hygiene by leaving his phone in another room, his urge to scroll will eventually have him waddling across the house with his pants around his ankles to retrieve it and spending the rest of his time on the toilet completely distracted from what he’s supposed to be doing.
Yep, this is downright depressing.
The worst part about all of this? Sammy is far from alone when it comes to his inability to go two hours on the toilet without looking at his phone. Obsessive phone use is becoming so commonplace and normalized that it’s getting to the point where we think nothing of it if we don’t have the mental stamina to spend half our day on the toilet distraction-free. This is not okay.
