I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about toilet/smart phone etiquette, and I’ve come to some very startling conclusions.

About 80 per cent of people I’ve spoken to on the subject admit that they never take a shit without playing games or tweeting or some other such smart phone-related activity.

On the one hand, this doesn’t seem too strange.

The porcelain throne can be a lonely and isolated place to spend five or 10 minutes at a time once or twice a day, so why shouldn’t we use the technology at our finger tips to help pass the time, or to connect with the outside world in a way that doesn’t involve pooping in a public park while trying to interact with others?

On the other hand, however, I think the practice of smart phone use during pooping may actually lead to some very serious consequences.

“ More than half of the students, who were all around age 11, had nicer and newer smart phones than I did

For one, since smart phones have been around for over 10 years, the last five of which have seen their popularity soar sky high, and since a huge number of smart phone users use their phones while pooping, it’s not at all unreasonable to assume that there is a thin yet significant layer of human feces covering every surface in the developed world.

This means that, even if you don’t have a smart phone (or for some reason you do own a smart phone but choose not to use it while you are pooping), as long as you’re the kind of person who occasionally touches stuff, then you are one of the millions of people walking around every day covered in the combined feces of our wonderful society.

That may sound like a bleak assessment of the situation, but the fact is that the likelihood of it being accurate is growing as more and more people give in to the irresistible desire to own and use a smart phone.

I was in an elementary school classroom a few months back and more than half of the students, who were all around age 11, had nicer and newer smart phones than I did.

And if I remember anything about being 11, then I can say with absolute certainty, that each of those phones was completely covered in feces (as well as Pizza Pop guts). 

That class was only a microcosm of the big picture. The reality is that there is poo everywhere, and something must be done!

In my opinion, the only way to solve this horrible problem is desensitization. We’re certainly not going to stop using our cell phones while we poop. That would be too easy.

So, therefore, the only way to solve the smart phone poo problem is for us to all go out right now and start flinging our poo at one another.

That way we can stop being so grossed out by the fact that the things we use every day to communicate by pressing them against our faces are covered in shit.

You’re welcome.

Published in Volume 66, Number 22 of The Uniter (March 7, 2012)