Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Come on guys, do you really need to check your phone at the urinals?

Let me begin with a warning. The key event of this article takes place in a gents toilet.

There can be very few kingdoms still unconquered by the mobile phone, and it is best perhaps to draw a veil over which dominions may still enjoy some immunity, says the author.

There can be very few kingdoms still unconquered by the mobile phone, and it is best perhaps to draw a veil over which dominions may still enjoy some immunity, says the author.

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

Let me begin with a warning. The key event of this article takes place in a gents toilet. This, of course, remains a family column, but the management cannot be held responsible for any random images that run through your head while reading.

It begins during a busy afternoon at Westminster. Walking into the gents, I saw a chap scrolling through his phone as he stood at the urinals, going about his business.

I cannot tell you precisely what he was reading; there are limits to how interested one should appear in what is happening at the next stall. I’m pretty sure it was nothing salacious. I guess it was Twitter or maybe email.

Anyway, there he stood, scrolling away with his free hand. And all I could think was, for heaven’s sake man, give yourself the wee.

We are talking about, I don’t know, 30 seconds away from the phone. This was not a particularly hectic day. He could spare half a minute to attend to his basic needs. It’s a moment of relief after all; surely he owed that to himself.

I know people read books on the toilet, but I’ve never heard of it happening at the urinal. It could be worse, I suppose. Twitter, for example, was originally intended for status reports. Much as we love our followers, there are surely limits to how much we want to share.

A few moments later he left, only to be replaced by another man who did precisely the same thing. Now I was worried. Was there a browsing etiquette in this particular loo?

In the pantheon of mobile-phone addiction this is a new low.

We are all used to people walking blindly along the streets or dawdling in front of us as they get off the rush-hour train, meandering away with their heads in that downward angle that confirms they are far too involved with their own life to worry about whether they are delaying everyone else.

They are now in my top three train offenders, behind buskers and people who won’t take off their backpacks in rush hour. (This last group is a new and monstrous social evil that deserves to be named and shamed in a way currently reserved only for racists and manspreaders.)

Seriously, it’s like being wedged in by dozens of people, each with a small gibbon on their back, which whacks you whenever they move.

The scenes in the loo, however, takes addiction to a new level. Is nothing sacred? Aren’t there just a few seconds when the phone can be left alone?

What is alarming about the incident is not the obvious poor form or general lack of sanitary standards. The frightening thing about this is the extent to which this is now utterly unthinking behaviour.

Had these guys stopped to consider what they were doing, they would doubtless have waited. But these were almost certainly unconscious actions.

They simply found themselves under-occupied and reached for the phone. Perhaps they were reading on the way in and it simply didn’t occur to them to stop.

I’ve always been a sceptic of the cult of mindfulness fad but suddenly you can see the case for it. Because the alternative is mindlessness — and mobile mindlessness in particular.

We often lament the screen addiction of children, yet our constant connectivity has trained us to fill any unoccupied moment with screen time. We do it all the time.

Sitting at home with a loved one, watching TV or in a meeting at work we suddenly realise that without even thinking about it, we have opened some app the second our minds began to wander. It is too depressing to contemplate how this will go if the tech companies ever really crack smart glasses.

There can be very few kingdoms still unconquered by the mobile phone, and it is best perhaps to draw a veil over which dominions may still enjoy some immunity. But it is time to fight back.

Society demands more places where browsing is just not the done thing. It is time to reclaim our headspace — one toilet at a time. FINANCIAL TIMES

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Shrimsley is editorial director of the Financial Times. Before this, he served as the FT’s chief political correspondent, news editor and managing editor of FT.com.

Related topics

mobile phone addiction digital detox toilet

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.