When you feel the need to pee or poop, do you look for your phone before heading into the loo to do your business? If the answer is yes, you are one of the many. Most people these days are addicted to using their smartphones all the time, even or especially when they go to sit on the toilet seat. Why is that?
While it is fair enough to argue that smartphones are addictive, this practice goes even before smartphones were invented. Back then, people used to carry magazines, newspapers or novels inside the loo while they did their business, and some people still do. So, why do we enjoy reading or consuming content on the throne?
American analyst Otto Fenichel determined in 1937 that reading is an act of incorporation, so toilet reading is “an attempt to preserve the equilibrium of the ego; part of one’s bodily substance is being lost and so fresh matter must be absorbed through the eyes.”
James Strachey, Sigmund Freud’s English translator, agreed. He argued in 1930 that reading “is a way of eating another person’s words,” so people who read on the toilet are reading the words excreted metaphorically by an author at the same time as they excrete literally, explains Time Magazine.
