As Malaysia's population ages, gerontechnology emerges as a crucial tool for enabling older individuals to live independently, maintain social connections, and manage health issues.

Los números son contundentes. Para 2035, Estados Unidos contará con 78 millones de personas mayores de 65 años frente a 76.

Virtual reality (VR) is enhancing the lives of seniors in nursing homes by combating cognitive decline and improving social interactions. Companies are creating VR experiences that allow elderly residents to explore their past and engage with others. This innovation presents business opportunities in content creation, social platforms, specialized hardware, and caregiver training.

Gerontechnology merges aging science with tech innovation, empowering seniors and people with disabilities to live independently with dignity and connection.

In order to understand Hong Kong citizens' views on the development of gerontechnology, Lingnan University recently held a public opinion survey. The results show that gerontechnology products related to health care and exercise are of the greatest interest to the public, although about 60% of respondents find the cost of such products prohibitively high, which presents a barrier to purchase.

We’re not “tech-challenged” — we’re just done pretending your crap is helpful

Wanting to age in place, older people often turn to their loved ones for help. Being a caregiver is challenging enough but many are seeing technology support now added to their responsibilities.

Today's post is a link to the presentation that Bill Johnston and I gave at the European Conference on Information Literacy last week, AI + Age-Friendly Media and Information Literacy: Gerontechnology. In the presentation we defined Ageism, and looked at the intersection of AI and Ageism. The AI generated images on the title slide (presented here) show how ageism is embedded (notably the small older woman sitting with the big AI robot pressing on her toes!) We defined Gerontechnology ("the interaction between aging individuals and technology, aiming to develop technologies that promote the health, safety, independence, and social engagement of older adults” (Ji et al., 2025, p2) and then looked at Ageism + AI + Gerontechnology (The World Health Organization has published a report on this). In response we highlighted: firstly the 3 Media & Information Literacy roles for older people that are proposed in our Age-Friendly Media and Information Literate (#AFMIL) model (Webber & Johnston, 2019); secondly, the need to exlplore older people's Digital Repertoires (rather than concentrating just on digital skills) and finally we presented Birkland's (2019) interesting typology of older people's technology use. A goal is to to create gerontechnology which is life-wide, creative, and going beyond a focus on care and health. You can download a copy of the slides (in pdf format) from here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ut9j6fIvHa98c44rdEk5hTwW_bUkuTlg/view?usp=drive_link

𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐄𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐈 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 As cities accelerate digital transformation, one urgent question guided today’s discussion: how do we ensure our elderly are not left behind? Moderat...

The demographic landscape of the United States is undergoing a monumental shift. By 2050, older adults will constitute the largest demographic group in the nation (Verghese et al., 2024). This "grayin...

The programme for the 2025 European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) is available, taking place 22-25 September 2025 in Bamberg, Germany. I (Sheila) will be - chairing and presenting on a panel, Developing an international research agenda for Information Literacy, with Professor John Budd, Bill Johnston, Dr Karen Kaufmann, and Professor Clarence Maybee. - presenting a paper, AI + Age-Friendly Media and Information Literacy: Gerontechnology, with Bill Johnston - and am honoured to be invited to give feedback in the doctoral forum Other University of Sheffield Information School presentations are: - The opening keynote from Dr Andrew Cox: The Dimensions of AI Literacy - Co-producing research priorities for Health Literacy with marginalised communities: Dr Pamela McKinney, Dr Laura Sbaffi, Dr Andrew Cox, Professor Peter Bath - Female engineering students’ information experiences: Preliminary findings from a PhD study: Laura Woods The programme is here: https://www.conftool.org/ecil2025/index.php?page=browseSessions Information about registrationis here: https://ecil2025.ilconf.org/registration/