Technology Caregiving: Reframing How Older Adults Are Supported in Everyday Digital Activities

Abstract

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.