We got an Alexa for Christmas. The most noticeable impact on our family is that our daily lives are now a continuous version of Trivial Pursuit. Someone will observe that it’s very windy outside. Alexa will get pummeled with questions about how high wind speeds are or what the windiest place in the world is or where the term breaking wind came from.

I’m really regretting that Alexa didn’t exist when my kids were in the stage where they asked questions all day long. Instead of getting frustrated when I didn’t know how often bugs pooped or how many species of lizard live in the Amazon, I could have set them up with Alexa and they could have become junior “Jeopardy” champs by age 8.

We’ve also been listening to a lot more music. I am more than a little jealous that my kids can hear any song they like instantly. They don’t have to camp out by the radio during the weekly top 40 hoping to catch their favorite tune. They don’t even have to hit rewind to play it over and over and over again. This has also led to some of the biggest fights as certain members of our family would prefer to hear Taylor Swift 24/7 and others of us would prefer to never hear her again. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why you would need to listen to the Kidz Bop version of any song at all when you can listen to the original. But now it’s a question I ask daily and Alexa does not have the answer to that one.

The Wonderful Husband, who is usually the last holdout when it comes to incorporating new technology into our daily lives, is even on board with Alexa since he’s found new recordings by some of his favorite artists.

I have yet to expand my Alexa horizons into online ordering or keeping track of my grocery list. I still enjoy writing down meal plans and recipe ideas in an actual planner, although I can see a future where the whole family starts functioning more independently and having a centralized grocery list to keep track of what we run out of might come in handy.

Right now, Alexa would get directions like “Tell mom to buy 15 boxes of Pop-Tarts and all the Fruity Pebbles she can carry” versus the reality of “I will buy all the fresh fruits and vegetables that I can fit in the grocery cart and you will eat them and like them.”

I also didn’t need the kids to be advised of the up-to-the-minute delivery instructions that came with the bookbags I needed to order or a book that G needed for a homework assignment. Alexa handled being badgered as to where the book was and when it would be delivered much more calmly than I would have.

Now the kids are bugging to get more automation. They promise me that this is the solution to them never being able to remember to turn off a light switch. They’ve also informed me that there are these vacuum cleaners that run all by themselves and you can let them run when you’re not even home. I told them that I have three devices that can operate vacuum cleaners all by themselves, too, and if they know what’s good for them, they’ll get busy with that right away and stop trying to get out of their chores.

Here is where I start to worry about the slippery technological slope that we are on. Recently, I read an article about how to prevent stress injuries in young athletes. Along with stopping the early specialization in one sport, or one position, this article suggested a steady regimen of household chores to exercise a full range of motion and engage all the muscles. In the context of this article, I believe that chores were the antidote to both those that overextend themselves in one area and those that underextend themselves in all areas.

I realize that as our weekends are spent at swim meets and wrestling matches, and the dust bunnies reproduce at an alarming rate, that it is very tempting to succumb to the purchase of a gadget to fix it all. That self-propelled vacuum would do a fine job of keeping the house clean and allowing us to do whatever we want on the weekends. But I know how our family operates and while we might first get it to just “fill in” when we are “really busy,” it wouldn’t be long before it took over and we never physically vacuumed again.

As a parent, and even just as a human these days, trying to find a technological balance can be nerve-wracking. While I prefer my kids to be able to access up to the minute, accurate information on the internet, as opposed to hauling out the dusty old Encyclopaedia Britannica, I still think they need to get off their butts and keep the dust out of the rest of the house. They can certainly use Alexa to crank out some tunes while they’re at it, but no, Alexa can’t answer that homework question for them. Once we have all the chores done, the homework finished, and the instruments practiced, and it’s time to relax, then we can ask, “Alexa, let’s watch ‘WALL-E.’ ”

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.