Abstract
It is estimated that there will be an increase of older adults living alone in Singapore and these older adults are at risk of social isolation and depression. Many studies have been done to help these older adults, with in-house robots and virtual embodied conversational agents being set up to socially support them. However, these methods prove to be expensive and time consuming. With the increasing number of smartphone usage among older adults as well as recent support from the Singapore government for older adults to adopt smartphones, I saw an opportunity to create a chatbot for older adults in a smartphone setting. Current chatbots are used reactively and try to complete a task as soon as possible without the intervention of a human. Hence, I seek to do the opposite and find out if a proactive chatbot in a smartphone setting can provide social support for older adults living alone. We created Sofia the Elderbot, which checks up on older adults every day and prompts them questions textually to keep them engaged in a conversation. This act replicates the idea of a social worker’s home visit with the older adults, asking them about their day and well-being. A field study was conducted with 12 participants to see if the proactive chatbot could improve their loneliness level and feel socially connected. The result showed that a proactive chatbot can provide the care and concern of a human with the constant checking in on the older adult. Some of the participants felt thankful to know that there is someone out there who is concerned about them and keeps messaging them because even though they receive messages on WhatsApp, they do not receive any personal messages that check upon them. Therefore, our research suggests that a proactive chatbot on a smartphone that constantly checks up on older adults living alone may help them feel cared for.