Cell Phones: The Unexpected Bacteria Hub In Your Pocket

How often do you avoid touching bathroom door handles, public taps, and surfaces that many people have touched? If you don’t trust those surfaces, why do you trust your phone?

Your phone is a cesspool of bacteria; from putting it down on any surface when you’re busy to taking it into the bathroom, your phone picks up all the bacteria that exists around it. When you’re using your phone, you’re transferring this bacteria back onto yourself and others.

Bacteria from our phones can make us sick when they enter our bodies. But if you’ve been healthy all this time, why should you be worried about what is on your phone?

How Your Phone Picks Up Bacteria?

Your phone picks up bacteria from direct contact with surfaces around it; this means that if you’ve ever dropped your phone on the ground, there was no 5-second rule! Your body is probably used to the germs you’ve been exposed to from your phone by now, but after a year mainly surrounded by very few, you could get sick.

American’s pick up the phone 47 times a day, during which bacteria can transmit bacteria between your fingers and your phone. Cellphones tend to get covered by much more bacteria because they’re often touched before washing our hands, even in the bathroom. Fecal matter can be found on one in six phones because germs are spread everywhere when you flush a toilet.

How Do The Germs From Your Phone Affect You?

Touching your bacteria-covered phone and then immediately touch your face, eyes, nose, or mouth, those germs get into your body and can cause an infection depending on how weak your immune system is. It rarely happens because our bodies have become used to fighting the diseases carried by the bacteria.

However, that may not be the case when it comes to your skin! Whenever you answer a call or have your phone in direct contact with your skin, you risk transferring that bacteria to your face with sensitive skin; this can lead to a painful breakout. So if you spend most of your day taking calls, you might want to sanitize your phone.

How To Sanitize Your Phone?

You can’t precisely pop your phone in the dishwasher and forget about them, but there are other easy ways to clean them. Use a mixture of 70% alcohol and 30% water, dampen a microfiber cloth with that solution and wipe the phone. Don’t use rubbing alcohol because it can take away the protective layers that keep your phone safe from water and oils.

Another option to sterilize your device and work for multiple objects and surfaces is to use UV light, which kills 99,99% of germs and bacteria. You can also use the sun’s natural rays as they contain UV rays.