How To Properly Disinfect Your Smart Phone
With the way things currently are, it’s important to be disinfecting the surfaces we touch everyday as much as we’re maintaining good hygiene for our own bodies. One of the surfaces we touch the most every day includes our cell phones. Whatever we touch, ends up on our phones, which we bring to our faces and touch with our hands daily. So here are some of the best ways to make sure your personal devices stay clean and germ-free.
First thing you need to do is take off your phone case and change it periodically. Your phone case is what you touch arguably more than the actual back of your phone, so you need to be disinfecting it as often as you are your phone itself, which should be at least once a day. Be very careful and delicate when removing certain cases, such as an Otterbox, as they are designed to adhere and protect your phone for long periods of time. Improperly removing them could cause your phone to break, so if you need, look up your specific cases removal process to be safe. ‘
The same concept goes with any kind of screen protector. While taking a disinfectant wipe to your phone’s screen protector daily will ensure that it’s clean, after a while certain dirt and bacteria can build up underneath the surface and get stuck. So frequently removing and replacing your screen protector will make sure that those particles are also removed.
Before you disinfect your phone, it’s important to wipe down the surface with some sort of microfiber cloth. This will lift off any larger dust particles before you take a more wet disinfectant wipe to the surface, once you do so there’s less of a chance of these bigger particles being left behind after you’re done cleaning.
Make sure you’re actually using a microfiber cloth of some sort, as traditional paper towels can be really abrasive to the glass on your phone’s screen and cause little scratches on the surface. It’s also important to note that during this entire cleaning process, your phone should be unplugged. If a charger is present, dirt and debris will only build up around the charging port of your phone and likely slip into the crevices and remain there indefinitely.
Anytime you’re cleaning around the charging port, speaker, or headphone jacks on your device, make sure you’re being very careful and mainly using dry cloths to clean those areas. Even if your device is waterproof, wet substances seeping into the phone itself will cause particles of dirt to build up and stay there.
One thing you should make sure you’re not using is a compressed air can. Compressed air is typically used to clean keyboards and desktop computers, but when they’re used on smaller personal devices, they just push particles deeper into the crevices of your phone. These dust, dirt, and bacterial remains can cause germs to build up rapidly and therefore adhere to something you’re touching with your hands constantly.
When it comes to choosing an actual disinfectant to use on your phone, steer clear of any Lysol aerosol-based cleaners, as they can be too harsh and abrasive. Simple disinfecting wipes will do, in fact, it’s what’s recommended.
Apple officially recommends a “pack of 70% isopropyl alcohol wipes or Clorox Disinfecting Wipes (if you can find either). Use that to wipe down your iPhone and its case (but only if it’s hard plastic). Try not to let your device get too wet and definitely don’t scrub around openings where you could introduce lint or moisture buildup.”
Finally, make sure you’re repeating this process often, especially during times of a worldwide pandemic, keeping surfaces clean and germless is of the utmost importance right now, and will give you a greater peace of mind while playing Candy Crush during times of self-quarantine.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.