If you check email, reply to texts or scroll Instagram while sitting on the toilet, you’re not alone in your dirty little secret.
Several recent surveys have attempted to find out how many people like to swipe and wipe… and it’s a lot.
An Australian survey claimed 41 percent of us double-tap while they crap, another found 75 percent of Americans scroll before reaching for the roll, and one even put the figure at nine out of 10 people getting the scoop while they poop.
That’s pretty good odds you’re reading this article on the loo right now.
But germ experts say using your device on the dunny is unhygienic, and can spread illness-causing bacteria and pathogens, the same as not washing your hands.
“Even if you’ve only done a number one, your hands and phone are in the area where fecal bacteria hangs out, and may pick some up,” Cheryl Power, a University of Melbourne expert in microbiology and immunology, told Coach.
Dr Charles Gerba, an American professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona, agrees it could easily spread germs.
“You could carry microbes right out of the toilet on your phone,” Gerba said, adding that norovirus (the most common cause of viral diarrhea in humans), salmonella and E.coli are just some of the nasties you could collect on your device.
And since for many of us our phones are constant companions, you could transfer those harmful microbes straight to your dinner table, where you might continue to check your phone while eating a sandwich … putting them straight in your mouth.