Microprocessing
Men Won’t Let Go of Their Phones While Peeing
Maybe they’re bored. Maybe they’re anxious. Maybe it’s both.
Bathroom reading is a sacred, time-honored tradition. Toilet-side literary entertainment has been a mainstay in homes for thousands of years: The ancient Romans kept libraries in their communal baths, and in the 18th century, Philip Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, wrote that someone he knew was “so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.” (I highly recommend this excellent 2006 piece in the New York Times about the history of bathroom reading — you know where you can read it.)
Today, the phenomenon has broadened to include not only the more time-consuming activity of pooping, but also the swift chore that is pissing at a urinal. Having never used a urinal myself, I do not have firsthand knowledge of the behavior, but male sources have informed me that staring into a glowing screen while standing at one is a growing trend.
“I have a nervous bladder.”
But a number-one is, of course, quicker than a number-two. Peeing takes 21 seconds, on…
