Technology to reduce social isolation and loneliness

Abstract

Large numbers of individuals, many of them senior citizens, live in social isolation. This typically leads to loneliness, depression, and vulnerability, and subsequently to other negative health consequences. We report on research focused on understanding the communication needs of people in environments associated with social isolation and loneliness, and how technology facilitates social connection. Our work consists of successive iterations of field studies and technology prototype design, deployment, and analysis. Particular attention is paid to seniors in retirement communities and in long-term care settings (nursing homes). We present design implications for technology to enable seniors' social connections, the "InTouch" prototype that satisfies most of the implications, and a report on one older adult's experience of InTouch.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 134 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.