All the parents of teenagers have once said this sentence: "But what have you been doing for hours in the bathroom with your phone?"
"Everyone witnessed astonished at the transformation made by the youngest of this place of ease, whose role seemed to have been well-defined until then, into an" ultra cocooning "living space, analyzes the sociologist, Ronan Chastellier.
Containment has only reinforced the trend.
According to an OpinionWay study, carried out from November 18 to 19 among 1005 people aged 18 and over on behalf of the European leader in sanitary technologies Geberit and which we reveal, if only 14% of the population has spent more time in the toilet since confinement, the rate rose to 34% for 18-24 year olds.
They who already invested a lot before the health crisis ...
More intimate than a bedroom ...
For them, the little corner (at home, not at school) is a safe haven (45%) that they favor to send SMS (40%) and especially to surf on social networks (47%).
A habit that we can guess even stronger among 14-18 year olds.
"The toilets, space of social place, it is an adolescent creation which was reinforced with the influence of social networks and continues among those who are between 18 and 24 years old today", decrypts the sociologist.
But why not stay in his room for that?
“It's more intimate, laughs Ambre, a high school student in Paris (12th century).
What I prefer is when there is no one in the apartment.
I can stay there as long as I want to chat with my friends, watch TikTok… I don't have anyone to say to me in an angry tone:
Are you going out soon?
When there are my parents and my sister, it is also the only place they absolutely cannot enter, ”explains the 15-year-old girl.
“I don't see why I would drop my cell phone to go to the bathroom when communicating with my best friends.
They are my best friends anyway!
», Is frankly surprised Sarah, 16, in premiere at Maisons-Alfort (Val-de-Marne).
“This is the final private place!
assures Ronan Chastellier.
It is at the same time completely hermetic to the rest of the world but, symbolically, hyper communicating.
The conversations that take place there are of the order of the diary.
"
"A safe shelter, a kind of cave"
How has confinement increased this practice, which exceeds adults?
The little corner, place of reading, still passes but there… “But I read there too!
rebels Enzo, 15 years old.
Not the comics that are stored in the toilets.
I look at what's on social networks, the news… It's my little pleasure.
Anyway, my cell phone goes everywhere with me, ”recognizes this other Parisian high school student.
“Young people are steeped in contradictions.
The confinement, especially the first, was experienced as an infernal camera.
They thus escape family over-proximity, during this momentary disappearance in the toilets, by confining themselves even more in this small place which seems to them protective.
Like a safe shelter, a sort of cave.
It is a place of reconnection with friends, a place of complicity that they appreciate more than their room.
And above all, it is the only room that can be locked, ”insists the sociologist.
READ ALSO>
Are teens going to change the world?
Are the toilets becoming a living space like any other?
“This disowned space that we adults do not really accept has indeed been happily reappropriated by the youngest”, Ronan Chastellier says.
