Why shouldn’t you clean your cell phone screen with alcohol? – teach me about 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, for our mobile devices; In our desire to keep these devices clean and disinfected, we are shortening their useful lives.

How do you usually clean your cell phone? Most readers will claim to do this often with alcohol, because, derived from disinfection habits learned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this liquid is within reach of our hands almost anywhere.

In addition, you will repeatedly clean your cell phone screen with toilet paper, napkins, napkins or your clothes with alcohol; Using both cleaning tools can irreversibly damage cell phones and significantly reduce their useful life.

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

It is true that our cell phones are a beehive of microorganisms, they are constantly in contact with our hands and they accompany us everywhere, even to the bathroom, which is why it is so important to clean and disinfect them. It is wisest to think about and, in fact, necessary. Option.

Moreover, we use our mobile devices constantly, which leads to fingerprints on our fingers or obvious dirt from the food due to our bad habit of consuming food while using the cell phone. Once 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

In short what happens is that it damages the surface of the screen. As many people well know, cell phone screens are manufactured with special layers that include coatings of different composition that serve for touch detection, anti-scratch effects as well as oleophobic and hydrophobic characteristics. which prevent oil or grease and water respectively. , damage the phone.

In this way, using alcohol to clean the screen damages these last two coatings mentioned, which are responsible for properly maintaining the cleanliness of our cell phone.

A chemical engineer warned the BBC that if cleaning with alcohol is done repeatedly, “in the long run we could cause a lot of wear on the surface,” adding that screens are “very resistant to any liquids.” are sensitive, such as in the case of LED, LCD or plasma screens, where pixels can be damaged, affecting the clarity of images.

So how to clean a cell phone screen correctly?

The most advisable thing is to do it with microfiber, which is a special cloth that will not cause any type of scratches on 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 amounts.

Likewise, it is extremely important that under no circumstances do you apply any cleaning liquid directly, because, apart from damaging your screen, it could also result in damage to your speakers. The right way to do this is to spread a little liquid on the microfiber and then clean the cell phone with it.