Breaking social isolation for older people living alone with technology

ABSTRACT

This paper is aiming to present two studies investigating attitudes of older people towards different technologies to break their social isolation and investigating the impacts of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) on physical and mental dimensions. The first study, based on focus groups conducted with 23 older people (aged from 65 to 93 years-old) allowed to collect attitudes and opinions of older people about different technologies to help them to break social isolation. The second study, based on an experiment conducted with 42 older people (aged from 63 to 85 years-old) allowed to investigate the impact of a specific Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) on physical and mental dimensions. The first study confirm that Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) can be a relevant digital tool for elderly people according to them, i.e. a digital tool perceived as useful, usable and acceptable. The second study demonstrates that use of a specific Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) system can reduce the perception of social isolation and can have positive impacts on physical dimensions such as the weight and the waist circumference. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology
• acceptability
• older people
• social isolation
• loneliness

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participants, all volunteers in the two studies presented in this paper. And we are grateful to the ‘Office Nancéien des Personnes Agées’ (ONPA) for supporting the first study and assisting the recruitment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fondation MAIF; Tohoku University; Université de Lorraine.