A person, on an average, touches his or her phone 3,000 times a day. Considering how much you touch your phone and other areas constantly throughout the day, it is important to keep your phone clean. In this article, we will be highlighting the importance of keeping your phone clean and how you should do it.
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Cell Phone- The Abode of Bacteria and Viruses
With the global pandemic going, we are all staying at home and keeping ourselves safer. Social distancing is one of the important protective measures that we have against the novel coronavirus.
Along with ourselves, this is also the right time to reinforce our personal hygiene routines. Constantly washing hands and cleaning your house with robust disinfectants are important measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
Even if you frequently wash your hands, if you touch your phone after you carried it around with you all day long, there is no point in the washed hand. This is because, at that point, your phone is going to be ten times dirtier than the toilet seat.
Today, we use our phone basically anywhere we go and whatever we do. So if you are using the phone while eating your food, chances are you are also eating bacteria. Though they don’t appear like it, cell phones can be quite gross.
A clinical professor of microbiology and pathology at Langone School of Medicine in New York, Philip Tierno, said that it is important to wipe your phone twice in a day. He continued by saying that one of the effective ways to restrict the transmission of fecal matter to the mouth is to avoid using the phone while eating.
If you do not keep your phone clean regularly, then you are not alone. According to a Reddit thread, there are tons of people who merely wipe their phones over their clothes a couple of times a day. And they consider this is keeping their phones clean.
Elevators, doorknobs, gas pumps, and handrails, wherever your hand touches your cell phone collects. A study published in 2017 looked at around 27 smartphones by teenagers and revealed that these devices had tons of viruses, including streptococcus, Staphylococcus, E.coli, etc.
And, these viruses stick around your phone surface longer than you think. Typically flu viruses can live up to 9 days based on the temperature and humidity. However, coronavirus is capable of surviving on surfaces for more than four weeks.
The authorities are still unsure until when coronavirus can survive on different surfaces. But they recommend people to disinfect highly touches surfaces. As per the existing reports, the coronavirus is capable of living on surfaces for several days. Based on the study, experts asset that bacteria and viruses can transfer from your smartphone to your hands and then to the different surfaces in your home. This makes it even imperative to keep your phone clean.
Keep Your Phone Clean – What You Should Keep in Mind?
When you are trying to keep your phone clean, you should not use the astringent cleaner that is used in wiping glass or hard surfaces. Moreover, do not spray any liquid directly on to your phone so you do not want your phone to get wet. Avoid cleaner that has an abrasive effect.
Keep Your Phone Clean – How to Do It the Right Way
Following are instruction for how to keep your phone clean and get rid of all the germs –
- When you clean the phone, make sure that you switch it off and remove the back cover.
- Gently wipe the phone with microfiber clothes to get rid of any cruds or smudges. The friction between the glass surface and cloth will physically remove the surface germs. However, this process does not ensure that all the bacteria are gone; instead, it will lift them off from the surface. You should use microfiber in place of paper towel or washcloth because it has a broader surface area for locking in the dirt and grease.
- When looking out for cleaning liquid, make sure to opt for products that are labeled safe to use on electronics. Cleaning with the right liquid will further ensure that all the leftover germs are eliminated as well. If your wipe is excessively wet, make sure to wring it out before using it. Thereafter in a gentle wiping motion, keep the surface of your phone and avoid getting liquid into the ports.
- Typically the effectiveness of disinfectants is increased when left to air dry. So once you have cleaned your phone, make sure to let it air dry for around 5 to 10 minutes. This makes sure your cell phone is sanitized in a proper manner.
- If you do not leave your phone to air dry for a longer period, you can use another clean microfiber and wipe off the excess liquid from the surface of the screen. Some microfiber cloths can be bleaches, and if, you can clean them regularly to avoid dirt deposition. You can keep washcloth and fiber cloth in boiled water for five minutes to make sure all the bacteria and viruses are killed.
- Once you ensure to keep your phone clean, it is time to disinfect your phone case. Here you can use more astringent as phone cases are generally made using hard plastic. However, if your phone case is made of leather material, avoid using bleach.
- When it comes to keeping the phone clean, a screen protector is a valuable investment. Along with protecting the actual display of the smartphone from breaking, screen protectors are capable of enduring powerful astringent liquids.
Conclusion
In the initial part of the article, we already explained how much germ your phone collects on a daily basis. Considering that phone has become an inseparable part of our lives, not keeping the phone clean exposes us to a lot of harmful germs and viruses. This is why it is recommended to keep your phone clean on a regular basis. It is not essential that you do a deep cleaning every day, but keeping microfiber clothes at your home and office desk allows you to easily wipe off the germs that are living on the surface of your phone. As for deep cleaning, you should do that at least twice a week.