Tech to help older people is a young and growing field

The U.S. is experiencing a massive demographic shift as the baby boom becomes the senior boom. According to the Census Bureau, more than 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older in 2030.

The tech industry is catching on. Big companies and small startups are increasingly developing products with older users in mind.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Keren Etkin, a gerontologist and creator of the blog The Gerontechnologist, where she writes and podcasts about the latest in age tech. Etkin said the idea that older people don’t “get” technology is just a tired stereotype.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Keren Etkin: It’s just about making the technology accessible and useful. And it has to bring value to their lives because people who have been on this planet for many, many decades, they will usually be better at resisting just grabbing the shiniest, brightest new object on Amazon. The bottom line is that I was really, really excited to find out that older adults do want to use technology. But we just have to do a better job at developing it.

Meghan McCarty Carino: And how are tech companies in this space creating this age tech with older people in mind from the beginning?

Etkin: What I’ve seen startups do, and what I’ve done myself when I worked or co-founded startups, is first of all, you have to obviously figure out who your target user and target buyer is, or at least have a hypothesis. And then, you go out into the field and you talk to, talk to people, you interview them, you ask questions, you figure out whether the problem that you’re trying to solve is actually a problem that real people in the real world have and they’re willing to pay for a solution. And from my experience, there are plenty of older adults out there who would happily not only answer questions, but will try out your product and will give you honest and sometimes even brutal feedback. And as an entrepreneur, sometimes that’s just what you need to hear.

McCarty Carino: What sort of technological innovations today are making aging in place easier?

Etkin: There is so much available today that wasn’t available five or 10 years ago. Even basic sensors for fall detection that you can find basically on Amazon today, those weren’t available a decade ago. And people who are, let’s say, in their 90s, they don’t necessarily feel that it’s safe for them to drive anymore. And so what are they supposed to do? How are they supposed to get around their own community? So even Uber or Lyft could be considered aging-in-place enablers. I mean, the more technology progresses, we’ll just have many more solutions. So if I look at decades down the line, by the time I’m older, I fully expect that I will have robots in my home to help me age in place.

McCarty Carino: Clearly, technology has a lot of potential to help this population. But I’m curious what it means for human connections.

Etkin: Unfortunately, loneliness among older adults is nothing new. And so I believe that technology can be part of the solution. It’s not the only solution. And one of the products that I had the fortune of working on is ElliQ, which is a social robot for older adults. And we built ElliQ for facilitating more frequent and quality human-to-human interaction by bridging the digital divide. And if we look into the future, again, I believe that metaverse could potentially be part of the solution. Because imagine if you could have dinner with an older loved one who lives hundreds of miles away. You would go have dinner in your holodeck and they would go have dinner in their holodeck. And you could feel like you’re in the same room. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

McCarty Carino: Are there other developments in this space that you’re particularly excited about?

Etkin: So in the near term, I’m incredibly, incredibly excited about autonomous vehicles. One, because hopefully, they will reduce the number of people who get injured and die in motor vehicle crashes. Specifically, they would potentially reduce the number of pedestrians who are injured and killed by vehicles driven by humans. And also, I think it will be a game changer for aging in place because it would enable everyone who doesn’t feel like they want to drive anymore just get into an autonomous car and get to wherever they need safely. And I think that will be really amazing and I’m really looking forward to that, honestly.

Related links: More insight from Meghan McCarty Carino

Etkin’s site, The Gerontechnologist, is full of interesting charts that show just how big this market is becoming. According to AARP’s startup incubator, the AgeTech Collaborative, Americans 50 and older already generate about $8.3 trillion of economic activity annually, as of 2018. That number could more than triple by 2050.