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Technology Caregiving: Reframing How Older Adults Are Supported in Everyday Digital Activities
Debaleena Chattopadhyay, Tasneem Mubashshira
TL;DR
Older adults increasingly rely on others to complete essential daily activities through digital platforms, but this help has often been described as IT support rather than caregiving. The paper develops a caregiving-based framework and reviews the literature, finding that this support is relational, ongoing, and burdensome while arising in a digital environment controlled by neither party.
Problem
Older adults increasingly depend on others to conduct essential daily activities through digital platforms, yet this support has been described as IT support rather than care work.
Method
The paper develops a conceptual framework through theory adaptation and applies it to synthesize literature on technology caregiving.
Results
Technology caregiving is relational, ongoing, and burdensome, and arises in a digital environment controlled by neither older adults nor caregivers.
Takeaways & Limitations
The paper frames help with older adults’ digital daily activities as technology caregiving rather than IT support.
Takeaways & Limitations
The review did not appraise the included articles’ methodological quality, so evidence from studies with different designs carried equal weight in the synthesis.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Transformed by digitization, everyday activities-paying bills, shopping, managing transportation-increasingly require older adults to navigate digital systems. To accomplish these digital activities of daily living (DADLs), older adults often rely on help that looks less like IT support-institutional, episodic, and product-oriented-and more like caregiving: relational, ongoing, and aimed at preserving their functional independence. We argue that this practice is technology caregiving and introduce a framework characterizing it along four dimensions: why support is needed, who provides it, when it occurs, and how it is delivered. Applying this framework, we then systematically review the literature on how older adults are supported in DADLs. From 3,381 unique records, 36 articles met the inclusion criteria. Findings show that technology caregiving involves burden, like traditional care, but is distinctly shaped as much by digital systems and their constant change as by technology caregivers' and older adults' abilities.
1 Introduction
Digitization has made many everyday activities dependent on digital systems, creating digital activities of daily living (DADLs) and risks of functional exclusion for older adults. The paper reframes assistance with DADLs as technology caregiving—ongoing, relational care work—and introduces a framework and systematic review to characterize it.
- 1 Introduction: Digital systems now mediate everyday activities and add tasks such as creating accounts, configuring devices, connecting to networks, and maintaining credentials.The paper defines DADLs as both digitally performed everyday activities and the tasks that make them possible.
- 1 Introduction: Difficulty with DADLs can cause functional exclusion because of age-related changes, limited digital confidence, or constantly changing, feature-rich interfaces.Examples include being unable to operate a banking app or log into a patient portal.
- 1 Introduction: The paper argues that help with DADLs is technology caregiving: ongoing, relational, person-oriented care work aimed at preserving independence rather than fixing isolated product problems.This labor is frequently invisible and unpaid, often carried out by family and friends.
- 1 Introduction: The technology caregiving framework characterizes support by why it is needed, who provides it, when it occurs, and how it is delivered.It distinguishes motivational, instructional, remedial, and delegation purposes; formal, informal, and self-reliant sources; stages from pre-adoption to continued use; and structured or unstructured delivery across collocated, remote, or hybrid settings.
- 1 Introduction: 36 papers from seven databases and supplementary citation searching were synthesized to identify support configurations and two cross-cutting themes: caregiving burden and digital-environment influence.Support configurations combine purpose, source, timing, delivery, and the artifacts through which support reaches older adults.
2 Background
Digital activities of daily living (DADLs) encompass both digitally mediated everyday tasks and the account, device, network, and credential work required to complete them. Older adults’ functional independence depends on navigating frequently changing systems, while usability barriers and the demands of caregiving make digital assistance an important form of support.
- Digital activities of daily living: DADLs include digitally performed IADLs and EADLs, such as shopping, arranging transportation, managing patient portals, and banking online.They also include creating, recovering, and maintaining accounts and credentials, configuring devices, connecting to networks, and managing authentication.
- Digital activities of daily living: DADLs differ from digital skills and literacy because they are activities themselves, including maintaining credentials and evaluating online information credibility.Skills such as operating a mouse or executing a touchscreen gesture support DADLs but do not constitute them.
- Challenges for older adults: Older adults’ independence can be limited when unfamiliar, frequently updated digital environments prevent access to essential services.The paper links inability to complete online taxes or manage multi-factor authentication to losses of independence comparable to inability to complete ADLs or IADLs.
- Challenges for older adults: Usability barriers include layered navigation, complex menus, limited trial-and-error confidence, repeated incorrect steps, and giving up on tasks.Frequent interface updates can disrupt established mental models, requiring continual relearning and sustained confidence.
- Caregiving literature: Caregivers traditionally sustain older adults’ independence and well-being through support with ADLs, IADLs, health, safety, and community engagement.Caregiving may be informal and relationship-based or formal and specialized, and it can be demanding for providers.
- Caregiving literature: Digitization has created a distinct form of labor: helping older adults with everyday digital activities.This focus differs from the paper’s out-of-scope review of technology-mediated tools for physical or domestic care.
3 Technology Caregiving
Technology caregiving reframes help with older adults’ everyday digital activities as ongoing, relational care aimed at maintaining quality of life and functional independence rather than repairing devices or services. It is shaped by recurring needs and rapidly changing digital systems, as well as by the abilities of caregivers and older adults.
- Care orientation: This help is oriented toward older adults’ functional independence and quality of life, rather than device repair or IT-service maintenance.This orientation distinguishes caregiving work from support focused primarily on technical systems.
- Relational character: Like traditional caregiving, technology caregiving is relational and ongoing rather than episodic, but it can strain relationships and consume helpers’ time, skills, and patience.Older adults and helpers may disagree about what help is needed, how it should be provided, or whether it meets the need.
- Sources of support: Technology caregiving can be formal, informal, or self-reliant, paralleling the three types of traditional caregivers.Examples include professionals or institutions, trusted community members or relatives, and older adults helping themselves with notebooks or digital tools.
- Definition: Technology caregiving is the ongoing, relational practice of supporting older adults in navigating digital activities of daily living.The practice maintains quality of life and preserves functional independence.
- Distinctive conditions: Digital systems change frequently and rapidly, so technology caregiving is rarely finished and needs recur because both circumstances and technology change.Its success also depends on systemic conditions such as internet and device access and third-party platform choices.
Technology Caregiving
Technology caregiving reframes support for older adults’ everyday digital activities as a relational practice rather than a single, institutional resource. It is distinguished by a changing digital environment that continually reshapes activities and the resources caregivers need.
- Limitations of existing models: Adoption models treat support as a monolithic facilitating resource, combining institutional and social forms without distinguishing how they are enacted.Instruction manuals, computer training, help desks, and family encouragement are folded into one construct.
- Motivation: The digitization of daily life decouples older adults’ technology use from single institutions and reveals a more care-oriented account of support.Everyday technology use increasingly unfolds outside workplaces and other institutions.
- Technology caregiving: For everyday activities such as banking, managing health online, and video calling, adoption-model support is technology caregiving.Specialized or workplace activities remain better served by institutional IT support.
- Relation to social support: Technology caregiving inherits social support’s relational character but is distinguished by the digital environment central to the practice.Perceived support can bolster older adults’ confidence and willingness to engage with technology.
- Technology caregiving: The digital environment often changes without warning, continually reshaping older adults’ activities and altering the resources caregivers must use.The practice is characterized across technology-use stages, providers, and the needs support addresses.
4 A Framework of Technology Caregiving
The Technology Caregiving Framework reframes IT support through the lens of care, defining technology caregiving as a distinct domain characterized by four dimensions: why, who, when, and how. It also identifies the artifact that mediates support as the means through which any caregiving episode is carried out, rather than as a fifth dimension.
- Framework foundations: The framework adapts IT-support concepts through care theory, yielding technology caregiving as a distinct conceptual domain organized along four dimensions.The dimensions are why support is needed, who provides it, when it occurs, and how it is delivered.
- Why support is needed: The why dimension classifies support by purpose as motivational, instructional, remedial, or delegation.These purposes address engagement, new activities, breakdowns in familiar activities, and transferred responsibility, respectively.
- Who provides support: The framework defines the who dimension as formal, informal, or self-reliant support, based on whether help comes from professionals, personal contacts, or the older adult using an artifact independently.Self-reliant support is included as an edge case because it mirrors self-care, although caregiving is usually relational and provided by another party.
- When support occurs: The when dimension distinguishes four stages of technology use: pre-adoption, onboarding, early use, and continued use.The framework separates onboarding from early use because setting up technology and beginning to use it involve different work and require different support.
- How support is delivered: Support is delivered through an artifact—the means that carries the episode—which may be physical or nonphysical and is not a fifth dimension.Each episode is categorized across the four dimensions while the artifact identifies what the support works through.
5 A Systematic Review of Technology Caregiving
The systematic review identified 36 eligible articles on support for older adults completing digital activities of daily living, using PRISMA-guided searches and thematic analysis. The corpus was recent but concentrated in HCI/computing venues and a limited set of regions, with predominantly qualitative studies and small samples.
- Search and selection: The review included empirical studies examining support that directly helped older adults accomplish at least one digital activity of daily living.Examples included online shopping, social media use, and video calling; studies focused only on passive interventions or caregiver-only tools were excluded.
- Analytic approach: Thematic analysis tested the framework’s four dimensions, described recurring support configurations, and compared technology caregiving with traditional caregiving.The first two aims used codebook thematic analysis, while comparison used reflexive thematic analysis developed interpretively across the corpus.
- Search and selection: 4,026 database records and 51 additional records yielded 36 eligible articles after duplicate removal, screening, and full-text review.After removing 696 duplicates, 3,381 records were screened, 115 underwent full-text review, and 36 met the inclusion criteria.
- Corpus characteristics: 75% (n= 27) of the 36 articles appeared between 2022 and 2026, and 72% (n= 26) appeared in HCI and computing venues.ACM CHI alone accounted for 13 articles, while the final year was only partially covered by the search.
- Corpus characteristics: The 36 articles reported 43 studies, which were predominantly qualitative and small-sample, with only four studies including more than 35 older adults.Samples ranged from five older adults in a co-design workshop to 701 respondents in a national survey.
- Corpus characteristics: 39% of articles reported data from East and Southeast Asia, while no article reported data from Africa, South America, or South Asia.The 14 articles from East and Southeast Asia, together with eight European articles and single articles from Australia and Israel, concentrated the corpus geographically.
Support Articles
The reviewed literature identified three recurring technology-caregiving configurations, while showing that support imposes relational and workload burdens on older adults and helpers. Digital environments shaped the purpose, source, and timing of support, often creating and resolving support needs.
- Configurations: Three configurations recurred: informal, unstructured support during continued use; formal, structured institutional support; and self-reliant support.The first configuration included all seven articles reporting all four purposes, and fourteen articles described support delivered both collocated and remotely.
- Burden: Informal helpers faced repeated teaching, task substitution, hidden preparation, troubleshooting, and emotional relationship work, often limited by their own time or patience.One study identified relationship, preparation, facilitation, and troubleshooting-and-recovery work; conflicts over fraud prevention could persist for years.
- Older adults: Older adults sometimes experienced help-seeking as imposing, embarrassing, or frustrating, leading them to ration requests, stop asking, or abandon digital functions.They were more likely to ask grandchildren or friends and peers than their own children, while traditional values could make help-seeking more cautious.
- Digital environment: Digital-environment characteristics hindered support more often than they facilitated it: hindrance predominated in 24 articles, facilitation in five, and 31 reported both.The environment shaped support’s purpose in 32 articles, source in 28, and timing across technology-use stages in 17, while system changes could move users backward.
6 Discussion
The discussion frames support for older adults’ digital activities as technology caregiving: relational, ongoing care work shaped by changing digital systems rather than episodic IT support. The review also shows that this work is burdensome and largely unsupported, motivating infrastructure and digital-inclusion efforts that address continued use.
- Framework: Technology caregiving is care work rather than IT support, organized through purpose, source, timing, and delivery.These four dimensions accounted for every reported support configuration, with no category empty or redundant.
- Caregiving resemblance: Support was relational, ongoing, and burdensome, involving time, interruption, repetition, strain, helplessness, and depleted patience.The burden was largely invisible and unevenly distributed, although some helpers found meaning in sustaining the relationship.
- Distinctive conditions: Changing platforms, devices, networks, and account systems repeatedly created, altered, or renewed support needs beyond either party’s control.Interface redesigns could invalidate prior learning, while account changes could close one need without ending the broader work.
- Recognition and support: Formal technology caregiving infrastructure was largely missing, leaving family members and staff employed for other duties to absorb the work.Only four articles described dedicated services, and only the help desk resembled typical incident-oriented IT support.
- Limitations: The synthesis did not appraise article quality, measured literature reporting rather than real-world frequency, and omitted aspects such as timeliness and effectiveness.Its corpus also drew on few regions, including twelve studies from China, limiting cultural coverage.
- Implications: The findings support making this invisible work visible and developing policy categories, training pathways, compensation, relief, and a paid workforce beside unpaid helpers.Digital inclusion should address technology caregiving alongside devices, connectivity, and initial skills because digital environments keep changing and needs return.
7 Conclusion
The paper frames help with older adults’ essential digital activities as technology caregiving rather than IT support. Its review finds this care is relational, ongoing, and burdensome, and recommends designing support into digital products.
- Older adults increasingly rely on others to complete essential daily activities through digital platforms.
- The paper names this help technology caregiving and characterizes it by the support’s purpose, source, timing, delivery, and artifacts.
- 36 empirical articles were reviewed, and the framework accounted for all reported support as relational, ongoing, and burdensome.
- Because this care arises in a digital environment controlled by neither party, platforms should build in self-reliant and helper-in-the-loop support.
Appendix · A Keywords used for literature search
The appendix includes a subsection presenting Table 4, titled “Keywords used for literature search.” It identifies the keywords used in the literature search.
- A Keywords used for literature search: Table 4 presents the keywords used for the literature search.
- Appendix: The table is included in the appendix.
- A Keywords used for literature search: The subsection is titled “A Keywords used for literature search.”
- A Keywords used for literature search: The table is designated as Table 4.
- A Keywords used for literature search: The table concerns a literature search.
- A Keywords used for literature search: The provided passage identifies the table’s subject but does not list the individual keywords.
B Additional details about the technology caregiving framework
The framework redefines support categories around what help addresses and whether the activity is new, while treating delegation as a continuum. It also groups organized support as structured and incidental support as unstructured, setting aside credential distinctions.
- Purpose categories: Remedial support addresses breakdowns in familiar activities, regardless of whether the system or the older adult’s skill caused the disruption.Examples include a software update rearranging a smartphone’s home screen or an older adult forgetting how to share a photo via WhatsApp.
- Purpose categories: Instructional support is limited to activities that are new to the older adult, rather than any assistance involving digital skill learning.Instructional and technical needs can be difficult to disentangle within one activity, such as paying for parking online while installing an application or adjusting settings.
- Purpose categories: Delegation is defined as a range, with complete proxy use representing one endpoint rather than the whole category.This broadens the taxonomy’s proxy-use concept for non-users who access the digital world indirectly through someone with digital skills.
- Structure categories: Organized support is classified as structured and incidental support as unstructured, because credential-bearing and non-credential-bearing instruction have little bearing on technology caregiving.A continuing-education digital literacy program and a senior-center workshop both fall at the structured end.
- Structure categories: The new structure labels avoid confusion with the who dimension, where formal and informal already describe the source of support.The framework sets aside the formal/non-formal boundary, which otherwise distinguishes credential-bearing instruction from organized instruction outside the formal system.
C Additional results from the systematic literature review
The 36-article corpus comprised 43 studies, was concentrated in recent HCI and computing research, and drew data mainly from East and Southeast Asia and North America. Studies predominantly examined small, qualitative samples of older adults and family technology caregivers using methodologically diverse designs.
- Publication activity: 75% (n= 27) of the 36 articles appeared between 2022 and 2026, while 72% (n= 26) appeared in HCI and computing venues.ACM CHI alone accounted for 13 articles; six appeared in gerontology and health venues, and four in social science venues.
- Data collection sites: 72% (n= 26) of the 36 articles reported data from East and Southeast Asia or North America, with no studies from Africa, South America, or South Asia.Fourteen articles reported data from East and Southeast Asia, and twelve from North America; Europe accounted for eight articles.
- Participants: 23 of 43 studies collected data from older adults, 14 from both older adults and technology caregivers, and six from caregivers alone.Five of the 14 mixed-participant studies recruited older adults and caregivers as dyads.
- Participants: Technology caregivers were usually younger adult children or grandchildren, while formal caregivers appeared less frequently in institutionally specific roles.Three studies instead examined older-adult peers, including spouses and care-home family members who themselves struggled with the technology they supported.
D Codebook
The codebook defines framework categories using category definitions, corpus examples, and non-examples coded out. It operationalizes arrangements, support-seeking norms, and additional devices as distinct aspects of technology caregiving.
- Codebook structure: Table 5 pairs each framework category with a definition, a corpus example, and a non-example coded out.This structure documents how categories were operationalized during coding.
- Arrangements: Arrangements allocate helpers, places, or tasks to make everyday digital activities possible, and may be created by older adults or caregivers.One example shows an older adult using a journal and timed videoconferences to support recall during calls.
- Norms: Norms govern whether support can be sought or given, including expectations that older adults may ask younger family members for help.The example connects willingness to seek help with the belief that adult children or grandchildren are “xiaoshun.”
- Additional devices: Additional devices are hardware at the older adult’s end, beyond the activity device, that carries support or provides a route to a helper.The example describes a Hololens headset and integrated hand-tracking tools supporting interaction in an augmented-reality interface.