Despite only making up about 4.5% of the world’s population, the US is one of the largest consumers of clean water in the world, consuming almost 4 trillion gallons of clean water per month. Making matters worse, an estimated 95% of water used in the average household gets wasted. But where does all that water go? Leaky faucets? Burst pipes? Inefficient toilets? For decades environmental scientist and policy makers have struggled to find precisely how such a staggering amount of water can be wasted. Until now.

A fascinating new study published by the EPA revealed that a majority of America’s water intake is attributed to one source: boys between the age of 11-16 masturbating in the shower.  Dr. Albert Poole, long-time professor at the University of California Berkley College of Natural Resources, made this incredible discovery after noticing his own pubescent son starting to take excessively long showers. “At first I didn’t give it much thought,” says Poole, “but then Richard’s showers went from twenty minutes, to forty, sometimes even over an hour!” Dr. Poole claims he had no idea what was going on until he saw his 13-year-old son come out of the shower wearing a silk robe and smoking a cigarette.

Dr. Poole finally made the connection and began to test his hypothesis amongst colleagues. Dr. Poole asked fellow researcher Eric Goff to observe his 14-year-old son, Jack, and look for similar behavior. Sure enough, Eric confronted Jack after a 41-minute shower to find him slipping into satin underwear and yawning contentedly.

After coming to a consensus, the two environmental scientists brought their findings to the Pacific Institute, a major global water think tank in California, who launched a full-scale investigation with shocking results. It wasn’t just Richard and Jack; the study revealed that 100% of teenage boys hide their shame by masturbating in the shower. Literally every single teenage boy was doing this, resulting in nearly all of the household water loss in California.

The Pacific Institute has tried to take on this problem by encourage parents to talk to their children and teach them about their developing sexuality. One anonymous John Doe parent says, “Uh, I rather not. I just, I think it’s the school’s job to be talking to our kids about this.” We talked to the John’s son who says, “Sometimes I won’t even be in the shower. I’ll just turn the water on so my parents think I’m showering.” His dad tells us that he is fully aware of what his son is doing; he just doesn’t want to confront him because it would be weird. The Pacific Institute found that if even 5% of teenage boys in California start taking normal-length showers, the state would no longer be in a drought. We told this to John Doe who replied “No. Yeah. Ya know, that’s fine. I still… I just think his school should tell him.”
This is a pretty representative response. It seems most California parents rather avoid an awkward encounter with their children than remedy a statewide environmental and economic emergency. We brought the same information to John’s wife, Jane Doe, who began screaming and furiously hitting us with her bag for writing an article about young boys masturbating.