JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Loneliness and social isolation can have severe effects on human health and well-being. Partial solutions to combat these circumstances in demographically aging societies have been sought from the field of information and communication technology (ICT).

Objective:

This systematic literature review investigates the research conducted on older adults’ loneliness and social isolation and physical ICTs, namely robots, wearables, and smart homes in the era of ambient assisted living. The aim is to gain insight of how technologies can help overcome loneliness and social isolation other than by fostering social communication with people, and what are the main open-ended challenges according to the studies.

Methods:

The data were collected from seven bibliographic databases. A preliminary search resulted in 1,001 entries which were screened based on pre-defined inclusion criteria. The final dataset consisted of 17 empirical studies.

Results:

According to results, physical ICTs are used for detecting and predicting, as well as alleviating loneliness and social isolation among older adults. The main open-ended challenges across studies relate to the need of more robust study samples and study designs. Further, studies report technology and topic specific open-ended challenges.

Conclusions:

To our knowledge, this review is the first one compiling the studies on detection and prediction of older adults’ loneliness and social isolation. We conclude that technology, by reacting to human behavior and interacting with people, can help to assess and alleviate older adults’ loneliness and social isolation, without a direct relation with other people.