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.

What helps most so far? Having a meaningful connection to the outside world for answers, reassurance and help. Here are seven tech tools to bookmark.

You don’t have to pay a fortune for a webcam. There’s an easy and free way to use old smartphones for better-looking video chats. Here’s how.

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

Facebook launches a desktop app for Messenger on both Mac and Windows. A look at the good, the bad and the promising.

Turn home school

In the war against the spread of the coronavirus, tech gadgets and telemedicine services are getting fast-tracked to the front lines.

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.