Smartphone scrolling on the toilet could increase risk of haemorrhoids

People seem to spend longer on the toilet if they use a smartphone while sitting there – and all that scrolling may be boosting their likelihood of getting haemorrhoids

By Michael Le Page

3 September 2025

It may be a good idea to leave your phone outside of the bathroom

Ekaterina Demidova/Getty Images

Do you use your smartphone while you sit on the toilet? If so, you are probably spending longer there than you would do otherwise – and that could be increasing your risk of haemorrhoids by nearly 50 per cent.

“Us gastroenterologists, we always tell our patients, ‘don’t spend too much time on the toilet’,” says Trisha Pasricha at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. “But when I went into the literature, I found that the data backing this advice is pretty scant.”

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Pasricha and her colleagues have now done their own study, where they asked 125 people who were scheduled to have colonoscopies to fill out questionnaires about their toilet habits, general health and physical activities. Images from the colonoscopies were then reviewed to determine if they had haemorrhoids, also known as piles, which are lumps inside or around your bottom.

“They’re actually very difficult for people to diagnose on their own,” says Pasricha. “Sometimes they’re internal, so you can’t feel them. Sometimes what you’re feeling externally are not actually haemorrhoids.”

Two-thirds of the participants, who were all aged over 45, said they used their smartphone on the toilet. “If we were to do this in college students, which we are planning on doing, my guess is that we’re going to find almost nobody who doesn’t bring their smartphone into the loo,” says Pasricha.