This Is How Disgusting Your Smartphone Actually Is

We all own mobile devices and we use them constantly throughout the day. But how many of us actually take a minute to consider the need for sanitizing our trusty sidekicks?

We don’t really think about it, do we? But our phones get dropped, smudged and touched all the time, so they are a very lofty place for bacteria to develop.

But since we don’t see it, we rarely think of it. A while ago, a study published by the University of Arizona demonstrated that the kitchen sponge which we use to clean our dishes is 200,000 times dirtier than the toilet seat.

Is your smartphone a dirty bastard?

You see where we’re going with this, right? Another study dating from 2013 and conducted by students at the University of Surrey tested smartphones for bacterial cells.

The scientists put the devices on agar plates, petri dishes which contained nutrients meant to encourage bacterial growth. They left them there for three days.

You can check out the results in the gallery below, but we warn you the images are not pleasant. As you can see the phones were covered in bacteria, but luckily the students found it to be pretty harmless.

There were some traces of staphylococcus aureus, which is known for causing skin infections, but levels weren’t so elevated as to be a real cause of concern.

Try and clean your smartphone weekly

Scientists with the University advised mobile phone users to clear their devices with disinfectant periodically, the advised time frame being on a weekly basis.

This precaution provide defense against the build-up of bacteria, making your handset a less likely environment for a colony of creepy looking bacteria of the sort you can see in our gallery.

Be careful not to overdo it though. Excessive use of sanitizer might end up harming the device's display, so you'll need to use a special solution for screens.