Cracked screens, damaged sockets and delinquent dogs — how Brits damage their tech

As we’ve become more reliant on tech devices we use them in more places that ever before, which in turn means more opportunities for them to suffer mishaps.

A new report from Secure Data Recovery UK looks at the common ways that people damage or lose their tech and at some of the weirder ones too.

Where phones are concerned, cracking the screen is top of the list with 77.44 percent having done it and around one in six currently walking around with a cracked screen. Getting something stuck in the charging or headphone socket comes next at 51.12 percent, followed by spilled drinks (48.94 percent), and throwing the phone (46.64 percent).

Some perennial favorites come further down the list: dropping the phone in the toilet (29.35 percent), leaving it on public transport (16.9 percent), leaving it in a coffee shop, bar or restaurant (16.09 percent), and leaving it on top of a car (six percent).

Among the more creative mishaps are dropping a phone and then running over it with a lawnmower, dropping a phone in a can of paint, dropping weights on it at the gym, and having a cow stand on it.

You might think that computers would be a bit safer but it seems Brits manage to do unspeakable things to those too. 43.27 percent have dropped a computer, 37.07 percent spilled a drink on it, 28.50 percent have damaged a computer by spilling food on it, and 28.83 percent have lost or broken keys — kudos here to the respondent whose dog ate some of the keys.

Pets have accounted for other issues too, including a cat peeing on a MacBook, a dog knocking a laptop off a table by wagging its tail, and a cat getting tangled in a charging cable leading to a damaged socket.

You can see more tales of tech woe on the Secure Data Recovery blog.

Image credit: Yekatseryna Netuk/Dreamstime.com