Smartphone users all have one thing in common – worrying about battery life. As these devices have become integrated throughout our daily lives for home, work, school, and travel, knowing ways to extend battery life is something we can all benefit from. Today we’re sharing some tried-and-true tips for better battery life, as well as a few you might not have heard about before.

TIP #1: Reduce screen brightness: This can extend battery life significantly, especially for devices with larger screens. The only time you need your phone at 100 percent brightness is outdoors, midday, when the sun is at its brightest. Most other times, 75% or less is sufficient.

If you use social media, you’ve most likely heard the term “cancel culture.” Even in the news on television and pop culture referencing, cancel culture is cited in every way from serious news to comedy memes. But do you know what cancel culture really is, how it’s affecting society today, and what it might mean for changes in social media and our culture in the future?

What does “cancel culture” actually mean?

The term “cancel culture” itself is vague and has become a catch-all for various situations with different degrees of severity and impact.

California has its own special season – fire season! Turn on the news and you can see how important it is to have a plan in place when wildfires or forest fires hit. According to the U.S. Forest Service, fire seasons are 78 days longer than in the 1970s. Since 2000, at least 10 states have had their largest fires on record. For the year 2020 in California, statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center show more than 10,000 recorded wildfires, damaging more than four million acres of land, and threatening more than 700,000 communities.

These worrying statistics, combined with current drought and weather conditions are putting emergency preparedness at the top of everyone’s list, ours included. Here are a few things we recommend you add to your list, especially when it comes to protecting your tech:

Everyone’s been stressing the importance of washing your hands and good hygiene for the last year, but one thing many might have missed is the importance of cleaning our smart phones and devices. Phones are on us all the time, but if we don’t clean them, we’re basically carrying around contaminated germ-factories in our pockets and purses.

Our mobile phones connect us to the world and are possibly the items we touch the most throughout the day. According to a survey conducted by the research platform Dscout, we touch our phones on average 2,617 times day – though the top 10% of users averaged 5,400. Studies have found that phones and other smart devices are covered in germs and greasy grime and are often just as dirty as the bottom of our shoes. When the coronavirus pandemic spread, people became hypersensitive about contaminated surfaces, but mobile devices have been widely overlooked. Here’s what you can do to clean them up.