Eli5: how does your phone have more germs than a toilet seat.
In: 2
Your hands touch your phone. Your butt touches the toilet seat. Your hands also touch a lot of other things. More things than your butt does, at least for most people. If you use your phone to phone people, you spit germs on it. I may be jumping to conclusions but I suspect you don’t talk into your own butt.
You touch it all the time, it falls on the ground, it doesn’t get sanitized often, it has fecal matter on it anyway from you holding it in the bathroom, the toilet doesn’t move around at all. There are lots of reasons the bacterial load on a phone would be higher than that of a toilet seat.
I still wouldn’t lick either though.
Just think of all the places you take your phone (including the washroom!) and all the opportunities for it to pick up bacteria along the way. Unless you wash your hands constantly all day, every time you touch something and then pick up your phone is an opportunity for more bacteria to transfer onto your phone.
Your hands are touching tons of things a day that other people touch. Doorknobs. Pencils. Menus. Railings. Money. Hands (handshakes). And that’s after these other people have touched anything and everything. While the things that can get on a toilet are gross inherently, it does not have the widespread type of germs that an unwashed hand contains. And then that hand touches your phone.
Germs like warmth and moisture. Your toilet seat is dry and cold. Your phone is warm and you hold it up to your mouth and spit on it when you are using it.
Your phone is also held in your hands. Your hands pick your nose, scratch your privates, hold door knobs, shake other people’s hands, touch taps and toilet flush handles and all kinds of disgusting things. Your toilet seat touches your butt, which spends its day encased in cotton touching nothing.
You think your phone is disgusting, wait until someone tells you what is in your kitchen sink!
When was the last time you cleaned your phone? Toilet seats are cleaned all the time, or at least they should be. But how often does the average person clean their phone? Your hands get dirty and then you use your phone. Sweaty greasy hair, dirty hands, all that gunk adds up.
Your hand is in contact with more surfaces than your backside.
At least, I hope it is.
Your hands pick up germs from all the surfaces you touch (shelves in the shops, handrails on public transport, public benches, etc) and transfer that to your phone.
Also you probably (hopefully) clean your toilet seat fairly frequently, but how often do you think to wipe down your phone?
1. Define “more”. More types? More per surface area? More overall?
2. Not all germs are the same, more != worse. The amount and type of germs matters a LOT, so even if its true your phone has “more” germs that doesn’t mean its less same than your toilet seat.
I just cleaned my phone with StarSan™ after reading the comments in this thread. Thanks all!
It’s about hands and how often you clean things.
Toilet seats are cleaned much more often than phones and phones usually go everywhere.
Usually door handles, remotes for TV’s etc are similar. Anything you and multiple people will touch that isn’t normally seen as dirty is usually the dirtiest things.
Bathrooms are considered dirty and thus cleaned much more than things like door handles and phones.
That said, covid has sorta brought light on this so
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