aceAI-powered voice assistants for older adults: a literature review of insights, research practices, and future directions
As the global population of older adults grows, AI-powered Voice Assistants (VAs) are explored as tools to mitigate loneliness, social isolation, and cognitive decline. By enabling intuitive, hands-free interaction, VAs provide a means to enhance independence, emotional well-being, and daily functioning for older adults. This paper presents a systematic review on older adults’ interactions with VAs, analysing 48 studies, which is more than double the scope of prior reviews. Studies were selected from an initial…
THE OLDER AMERICANS ACT: STRENGTHENING COMMUNITIES TO SUPPORT THE NEXT GENERATION OF OLDER AMERICANS by Committee on Education and the Workforce. Public domain
On 2026-07-09, a systematic review from Aston Publications Explorer synthesized 48 studies on older adults' interactions with AI-powered voice assistants, selected from 109 publications across Scopus, PubMed, and the ACM Digital Library. It identified six key research themes and reported a major finding on the potential for emotional companionship for socially isolated individuals.
The finding matters because voice assistants are being explored to address loneliness, social isolation, and cognitive decline as the older adult population grows. What remains uncertain is whether observed benefits persist outside controlled settings, given the noted lack of longitudinal research, limited real-world deployment data, and samples that are not fully representative of older adults. The review calls for more rigorous, representative evaluation practices.
- Review analyzed 48 studies selected from an initial pool of 109 publications across Scopus, PubMed, and ACM Digital Library, more than double the scope of prior reviews.
- Thematic analysis identified six research themes: usage patterns and interaction behaviours, adoption barriers and learnability challenges, user experience and satisfaction, cognitive and emotional impacts, design considerations, and future directions.
- Authors recommend accounting for novelty effects in short-term studies and adopting ecologically valid approaches such as in-home or longer-term deployments while documenting user-device interactions and digital literacy.
AI-powered voice assistants were found to enhance independence and daily functioning and offer emotional companionship for socially isolated older adults
The rundown
The review screened 109 publications from three HCI databases and included 48 studies. Analysis produced six themes covering usage patterns, adoption barriers, user experience, cognitive and emotional impacts, design considerations, and future directions. The authors noted that many studies fail to report participants' levels of technological experience.
Recommendations include minimizing artificial constraints that may influence user behaviour, systematically documenting user-device interactions alongside digital literacy, and using in-home or longer-term deployments to improve ecological validity.
Sources
- Peer-reviewedAston Publications Explorer (Aston University)2026-07-09
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