Developing radical-digital interventions to tackle loneliness amongst the elderly

Abstract

Loneliness is a growing issue amongst older people and one popular approach to tackling it is by developing non-medical interventions such as befriending services, mentoring provisions, social clubs, etc. Our analysis reveals that these interventions are predominantly incremental-physical in nature and that there is a lack of radical-digital ones. In this paper we discuss the properties of digital technologies that can be potentially helpful for the elderly and we suggest that social innovation provides a robust theoretical framework to conceive radical-digital loneliness interventions. We also draw parallels between loneliness interventions based on social innovation and the emerging ‘sharing economy’ in the digital world and discuss the role of third paradigm of HCI research in this area.