The average American spends 5.4 hours a day on their mobile phone from making purchases on apps, to checking email and taking photographs. According to RescueTime, one of several apps for iOS and Android created to monitor phone usage worldwide, people generally spend an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones every day.

And on average, we pick up our devices 58 times a day for a quick text or inbox check to glances at social media or games.

But beyond mobile phone usage, touchscreen usage is up in all aspects of our daily lives. Hospitals and doctors use touch screens for patient check-ins and many restaurants offer customers tablets to place their orders directly at the table.

We carry our mobile phones and tablets everywhere we go, from the dinner table to our morning commute and everywhere in between. Germs and bacteria can collect on the surface of your devices passed there from your hands or face that have touched it. Human skin is naturally covered in microbes that don’t usually have any negative health consequences. Those natural bacteria, plus the oils in your hands, get passed on to your phone every time you check a text or send an email.

According to a recent study by the State Food Safety Association, your mobile phone could be covered in as many as 25,000 bacteria per square inch, making it one of the dirtiest objects we come in contact with every day. In comparison, toilet seats carry 1,200 bacteria per square inch and a doorknob carries 8,600 bacteria per square inch.

So how do you protect your phone and other touchscreen devices from these dangerous strains of bacteria? There are a number of ways including washing your hands frequently, limiting device usage, and cleaning your device with anti-microbial wipes. One of the most effective ways to protect your device is by using an antimicrobial film to protect the surface of your devices.

ProtectionPro® by Madico has introduced its new antimicrobial Microbe-X screen protection which inhibits growth of microbes and bacteria on the product’s surface. The film is specially formulated with zinc pyrithione and is 99.99% effective in preventing the growth of tested microbes and bacteria. The film protects against stains and odor-causing bacteria on its surface.

Microbe-X features impact protection and optical clarity providing users the screen sensitivity they desire with antimicrobial protection. And with ProtectionPro’s cloud-based library of more than 20,000 designs, Microbe-X can be cut on demand to fit any device from mobile phones, and tablets, to laptops or watches.

Madico makes no direct or implied claims to protecting users or providing health benefits.