Author: Jennifer Jolly, Special for USA Today

Your smartphone can be your lifeline –
with back-battery charger and life-saving apps. You also need some other gadgets.

“I, too, have shifted from a weekend-only drinker to sipping one or two spiked seltzers almost every night,” Jennifer Jolly says.

As sheltering in place stretches into weeks for many, anxiety, isolation, stress and cabin fever are common. There’s free mental health help online.

You’re not crazy. Alexa, Google and Siri-controlled smart speakers accidentally activated as many as 19 times a day and stayed awake, a study shows.

Most of us are pretty hooked on our phones, spending the equivalent of a month and a half every year, swiping, scrolling and staring at their screens.

Ads on iPad apps went from English to Spanish after a few conversations in the language at home. Could Siri be listening? Short answer: That’s not why

Tech-centric worry makes up a lot of what parents are talking about today. Most of us know we should do something, but what, exactly? Here’s a start.

Here are a handful of new AI-powered gadgets that can do most of the thinking — and even some of the heavy lifting — around the house for you.