A new study suggests that scrolling on your phone while on the toilet could increase your chances of developing haemorrhoids. Doctors are now recommending a strict “two TikTok” limit for bathroom screen time.
Researchers found that people who bring their phones to the toilet tend to spend much longer sitting there, and this extra time is linked to a higher risk of the bulging veins known as piles. The advice is simple: leave your phone outside the bathroom or set strict limits to avoid getting stuck scrolling for half an hour.
“Leave your smartphone outside because when you go in you have just one job, and you should focus on that job,” said Dr. Trisha Pasricha, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “If the magic hasn’t happened within five minutes, get up, take a break, and come back.”
Pasricha and her team studied 125 people undergoing colonoscopies as part of a bowel cancer screening program. Participants completed questionnaires on their diet, exercise, bowel habits, and how long they spent on the toilet. The researchers also asked about phone usage in the bathroom, including which apps were used. All participants were 45 or older.
About two-thirds said they took a phone to the toilet, mostly scrolling through news or social media. After adjusting for factors like age, inactivity, and low-fiber diets, toilet scrollers were found to be 46% more likely to have haemorrhoids than those who didn’t bring a phone. More than a third of scrollers spent over five minutes on the toilet, compared with just 7% of phoneless bathroom-goers.
Reading on the toilet isn’t new, but Pasricha says that apps like TikTok and Instagram are far more distracting than the newspapers or magazines of the past. “The whole business model of these apps is to make you lose track of time,” she explained.
While further research is needed, Pasricha believes that prolonged toilet sitting caused by phone use puts pressure on anal tissues, weakening connective tissue over time and causing veins to swell.
There’s also concern about younger people. In ongoing research with college students, nearly all reported taking phones to the toilet, raising the possibility that piles could affect younger generations sooner than expected.
Haemorrhoids affect up to a quarter of adults. Most cases improve with minimal treatment, but more than 20,000 surgical procedures for piles are performed each year in the UK alone.
For those who can’t imagine a phone-free bathroom, Pasricha suggests setting a clear limit. “Set a two TikTok limit,” she said. “Don’t get so trapped in scrolling that you forget why you came here in the first place.”
