Why you shouldn't clean your cell phone screen with alcohol? – Teach me science

Cleaning your cell phone screen with alcohol is not the best idea! Our good cleaning habits can sometimes lead us to dangerous practices, in this case, on our mobile devices; While we want to keep these tools clean and sterilized, we may have shortened their useful life.

How do you usually clean your cell phone? The vast majority of readers will say they do this more frequently with alcohol because, derived from the cleansing habits we've learned as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, this liquid is at our fingertips almost anywhere.

In addition, you will often accompany alcohol to clean your cell phone screen with toilet paper, tissues, handkerchiefs or your own clothes; Using two cleaning tools can irreversibly damage mobile phones and significantly reduce their useful life.

Why you shouldn't clean your cell phone screen with alcohol?

It is true that our mobile phones are a container for microorganisms, they are in constant contact with our hands and accompany us everywhere, even to the bathroom, and for this reason thinking about cleaning and disinfecting them is the most wise and, in fact, necessary. option.

Additionally, the constant use we give to our mobile device causes fingerprints to appear on our fingers or visible dirt from food due to the bad habit of consuming our food while using a cell phone. Again, cleaning and disinfection are essential.

However, cleaning your cell phone (and other electronic devices) with alcohol is harmful to the screen and is not recommended. because?

What happens in short is that it degrades the surface of the screen. As known to many, mobile phone screens are manufactured with special coatings consisting of layers of different textures that provide touch detection, anti-scratch effects, as well as oleophobic and water-resistant properties, which prevent oil or grease and water, respectively. Phone damaged.

In this way, using alcohol to clean screens erodes these last two mentioned layers, which are responsible for keeping our mobile phones properly clean.

Chemical engineer warns BBC He added that if cleaning with alcohol is frequent, “in the long run we can generate significant corrosion on the surface.” In addition, he adds that screens are “very sensitive to any liquid substance, as in the case of LED, LCD or plasma.” Screens where pixels may be damaged, which may affect the clarity of images.

So how to clean a cell phone screen properly?

The best thing is to do this using microfiber, which is a special fabric that will not cause any kind of scratches to your device. In addition, you should use special cleaners for this purpose, which do not contain components harmful to the screen or are in harmless quantities.

Likewise, it is extremely important that under no circumstances apply any cleaning liquid directly, because in addition to damaging your screen, this could also have consequences for your speakers. The correct way to do this is to spread a little liquid on the microfiber and then clean the cell phone with it.