Voice-Activated Virtual Home Assistant Use and Social Isolation and Loneliness Among Older Adults: Mini Review

Abstract

A lack of social connectedness is common among older adults due to living alone, loss of loved ones, reduced mobility, and, more recently, social distancing created by the global Covid-19 pandemic. Older adults are vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness, which pose significant health risks comparable to those of smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, and high blood pressure. A lack of social connectedness is also correlated with higher mortality rates even when controlling for other factors such as age and comorbid conditions. The purpose of this mini review was to explore the emerging concepts of older adults' use of commercially available artificial intelligent virtual home assistants (VHAs; e.g., Amazon Echo, Google Nest), and its relationship to social isolation and loneliness. A secondary purpose was to identify potential areas for further research. Results suggest that VHAs are perceived by many older adult users as “companions” and improve social connectedness and reduce loneliness. Available studies are exploratory and descriptive and have limited generalizability due to small sample sizes, however, similar results were reported across several studies conducted in differing countries. Privacy concerns and other ethical issues and costs associated with VHA use were identified as potential risks to older adults' VHA adoption and use. Older adults who were using VHAs expressed the need and desire for more structured training on device use. Future research with stronger methods, including prospective, longitudinal, and randomized study designs are needed. Public education, industry standards, and regulatory oversight is required to mitigate potential risks associated with VHA use.

Technology and Older Women: Considerations Regarding Their Use and Misuse

“…Unfortunately, home surveillance devices can also be intrusive and compromise older women's privacy and sense of self-determination. In addition, regardless of the good intent, we must be wary of how, even with consent, these devices can lead to the invasion of an individual's home, their personal space ( 13 , 31 ). Consideration must be given to whether the social and ethical impacts of enabling technologies reflect contemporary community standards and expectations regarding the protection of an individual's privacy ( 32 ).…”

“…For some older women, communication devices and social media platforms may have facilitated a certain level of connection and positive exchanges with family, friends, informal networks, and activities ( 11 , 12 ). In the short term, technology might have eased the sense of dislocation and loneliness that can disrupt a person's sense of inclusion, their psychosocial health and wellbeing ( 13 ).…”

“…These range from voice activated devices and home systems (e.g., Automatic lighting, stove-top monitors), mobile telephones, computers (e.g., Screen readers and speech and voice recognition), email, social media to face-to-face communication platforms, including telehealth ( 16 ). These applications can contribute to the overall social connectedness and thus quality of life, of older women, especially those who live alone or with minimal support ( 13 ).…”

Assessing equity and quality indicators for older people – Adaptation and validation of the Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE) checklist for the Portuguese care context

“…A vulnerable older person (i.e., an older adult who is at risk of functional decline or death in a period of two years [ 6 ]) may be exposed to situations of inequity due to ageism [ 6 , 7 ], social isolation and loneliness [ 8 ], higher mental decline, or physical limitations. Frequently, older adults accumulate other conditions that may be factors of inequity (such as, lower education levels, lower health literacy, and lower income) or increase the complexity of care (namely, multimorbidity and the associated polymedication, and geriatric syndromes).…”

Barriers and facilitators of digital interventions use to reduce loneliness among older adults: a protocol for a qualitative systematic review

“…We systematically searched the PubMed database for current literatures without language or year restrictions, using the terms ‘loneliness’, ‘older adults’, ‘intervention’ and ‘systematic review’. We identified 28 reviews of digital interventions, including 10 scoping reviews,29–3811 systematic reviews (including 7 meta-reviews),22 30 39–47 2 narrative reviews,48 49 2 rapid reviews,50 51 1 umbrella review,52 1 mini-review53 and 1 systematic review of systematic reviews 54. The majority of the reviews aimed to explore the effectiveness of several or all of the digital interventions on reducing loneliness 31 35 36 39 40 45 47–49 52 53.…”