The number of people who clean their phones in the US may have doubled due to Covid-19
by Deirdre O'DonnellMost modern phones are made of materials on which pathogens, Covid-19 included, can survive on for up to 120 hours. Accordingly, bodies such as the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommend that they be cleaned once a day. New research suggests that up to 44% of users do so now, compared to about half this number prior to the pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in arguably necessary campaigns of public health infection risk awareness provided by organizations such as the CDC. Accordingly, this body now categorizes devices such as phones as "high touch" surfaces that should be cleaned once a day in order to prevent the build-up or transmission of micro-organisms, novel coronaviruses included.
It follows that other devices such as keyboards, tablets, mice or smartwatches could use the same treatment A recent study, based on survey responses from 1000 participants located in the US, has found that 44% of these users now follow this advice, compared to 22% prior to the pandemic. Similarly, 66.8% of these people now clean their phones once a week, whereas only 42.8% did so before this crisis.
However, 13.4% of the study cohort admitted to never cleaning their phone, viral outbreak or no. Given that phones (smart, dumb, feature or otherwise) can host an estimated 17,000 different bacterial species, this is not the best practice - especially as other research indicates that 40% of Americans get their mobile devices out in public places.
