[arosequist]

I'm not a scientist, but this paper found "high level bacterial contamination" of cell phones: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466825/

Anecdotally, we were recently in the NICU of a children's hospital and they required washing our hands and cleaning our cell phones before entering. It doesn't seem too far-fetched that they would have a reason for doing so.

[blowski]

David Mitchell, a British comedian, has a great comment on this. Given that all smartphone users are not dead, it just goes to show how meaningless studies like that are.

Being around people with compromised immune systems requires different standards, but day to day, it doesn't seem to matter.

[komali2]

I understand the attraction of stories like this, but it's not science.

For all I know, I only got the flu this year because my cell phone is dirty. Same for my roommate and his sinus infection.

The immune system does its job extraordinarily well, but putting it to work does take a toll on your body. I suspect we'll have studies linking random episodes of mini-depression or a bad day at the gym to an immune system in the middle of a pitched fight against an illness that it eventually wins, meaning the person doesn't get sick, meaning they attribute the bad day to just a bad day.

[blowski]

You're right that there's no science in David Mitchell's argument, but I'm not seeing any science here proving that "more bacteria on your phone is bad for you".

[iooi]

That sounds witty for a minute, but if you think about it, almost every single person that died in the past 10 years used a cell phone.

[ballenf]

Does the article address why cell phones wouldn't be an extension of the skin flora[1], in terms of normally having good bacteria? Or is there something about cell phones that kills off good bacteria, but not bad?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_flora (there are 1000 species of bacteria from 19 phyla normally inhabiting healthy skin)

[adzm]

People wash their hands. People don't usually wash their phone.