You should wipe this item down daily but almost no one does: it’s dirtier than a toilet seat
You wipe the kitchen counter every night. You scrub the toilet every week. And then, without thinking, you press an object against your face that’s carrying more germs than either of those. Most people never clean it. Not once.
It goes everywhere with you: restaurant tables, gym benches, grocery cart handles, public bathroom counters. Then it comes right back to your ear, your cheek, and your hands, right before you eat.
If you’re picturing the thing you’re reading this on right now, you’re on the right track. And the science on how dirty it actually gets isn’t a joke.
The number that should stop you cold
The average American touches this one everyday object 2,617 times a day. Heavy users touch it 5,427 times a day. That’s not a scare stat from a random wellness blog. Those numbers come from Dscout, a Chicago research firm that tracked 94 people’s every tap, swipe, and click over five straight days back in 2016. Usage hasn’t exactly gone down since then.
Now think about how many of those touches happen right after you’ve handled something dirty: a shopping cart, a door handle, cash, a gas pump, a public restroom stall. Every one of those touches leaves something behind on the surface.
What’s actually growing on it
Studies keep finding the same short list of unwanted guests: staph (including the antibiotic-resistant version called MRSA), strep, E. coli, and a type of yeast called candida. The often-quoted “10 times more germs than a toilet seat” comparison first came from a University of Arizona study. It’s been repeated so many times it sounds like an urban legend.
It isn’t.
A 2023 review of the research, published in the journal Tropical Medicine and Health and available on the NIH’s public site, put it plainly: more germs live on this one everyday object than on a man’s toilet seat, the sole of a shoe, or a door handle. That review pulled together data from studies in many countries and found germs on 75 to 96 percent of the items tested.
Why? A toilet seat is hard, cold, cleaned regularly with real disinfectant, and made to stay sanitary. This thing? It’s warm, held in a moist hand, pressed against a face full of oil, makeup, and skincare, and cleaned by almost nobody.
The CDC lists it as a high-touch surface, the same bucket as light switches, doorknobs, and faucets, all of which the agency says to clean every day. The FCC’s official cleaning guidance says the same thing.
One kicker from a 2020 survey (reported by Notebookcheck): 13.4 percent of Americans said they’ve never cleaned it. Not once. And even after the pandemic, only 44 percent do it daily.
Why it might be showing up on your face
Ever noticed breakouts that keep showing up on the same side of your face and nowhere else? Skin doctors have been quietly connecting the dots for years.
Dr. Anjali Mahto, a UK dermatologist and author of The Skincare Bible, says pressing this object against the cheek puts pressure on your skin that gets your oil glands going. Add the heat coming off it and the germs sitting on its surface, and you’ve got the setup for acne mechanica, the kind of breakout you get from friction and pressure rather than from hormones.
Dr. Derrick Phillips, another UK dermatologist, said during the pandemic he saw patients break out on just one side of their face, lined up almost exactly with the side they held it against.
This thing isn’t the only cause of acne. But if you’ve got stubborn cheek or jawline breakouts and can’t figure out why, it’s worth a look before you blame your pillowcase.
The “clean hands, dirty scroll” trap
Here’s the part that catches almost everyone off guard.
You wash your hands before you eat. Good. Then, seconds later, you pick up the object you’ve been handling all day with unwashed hands, hold it against your face, and set it down next to your food. Microbiologists have a name for this trap. No matter how careful you are with your hands, the moment you touch it again, you’re putting all the built-up germs right back on.
Using it in the bathroom makes it worse. Flushing a toilet sends up a fine mist of whatever was in the bowl, and any surface within a few feet (about a meter) of it gets a light coating, including whatever you’re holding while you scroll. Then it comes with you to the dinner table.
None of this is fixable by washing your hands more. The only thing that fixes it is cleaning the object itself, the same way you clean everything else you touch all day long.
What actually cleans it (and it costs almost nothing)
By now you’ve probably guessed: the object is your phone.
The good news is that both Apple and Samsung post official cleaning steps on their support pages, and they agree on almost every detail (which is unusual for those two companies). This is exactly what they say.
Do this once a day:
- Turn the phone off first. Unplug any cables.
- Take the case off. This part matters. More on it in a second.
- Grab a soft microfiber cloth. The kind that comes with eyeglasses works fine, and you can often get them free at optical shops.
- Dampen the corner of the cloth with 70% isopropyl alcohol (also sold as “rubbing alcohol”) or a 75% ethyl alcohol solution. Both are sold in any drugstore or Walmart for about $2 to $4 a bottle (about €2 to €4). Apple also specifically OKs Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. Don’t spray anything directly on the phone.
- Gently wipe the screen and the back. No scrubbing. Stay away from the openings (charging port, speaker, headphone jack if you’ve got one).
- Let it dry all the way before putting the case back on.
Do this once a week:
- Wipe down the case separately, inside and out. This is the part almost everyone misses.
Dr. Philip Tierno, a microbiologist at NYU, told Time magazine he cleans his own phone twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. He also pointed out something most people never think about: the case is often dirtier than the screen. The raised edges where the phone meets the case trap germs, and rubber or silicone cases hold onto them more than glass does.
What NOT to use on any phone:
- Bleach. Ever.
- Hydrogen peroxide.
- Compressed air (it can damage the surface).
- Window cleaner or kitchen cleaner.
- Alcohol stronger than 70 to 75 percent. Stronger stuff like 91% or 99% isopropyl actually evaporates too fast to disinfect, and can wear off the thin coating on the screen that keeps fingerprints from sticking.
That’s it. The whole routine takes under a minute, costs pennies per wipe, and is backed by both major phone makers, the CDC, and the FCC.
Sources: (1) Dscout mobile touches study; (2) Tropical Medicine and Health, review on mobile phone germs (NIH-hosted); (3) Time magazine on cell phone germs, citing University of Arizona and University of Michigan; (4) FCC official device sanitizing guidance; (5) Apple official iPhone cleaning guidance; (6) Samsung official Galaxy cleaning guidance; (7) Marie Claire, quoting Dr. Anjali Mahto from The Skincare Bible on phones and cheek acne; (8) Independent, quoting Dr. Derrick Phillips on one-sided phone-related breakouts; (9) Time magazine, quoting Dr. Philip Tierno of NYU on twice-daily cleaning and case germs; (10) Notebookcheck on Americans’ phone-cleaning habits, citing 2020 survey data