By Jack Cumming

Recently, we published an article on the loneliness challenge in senior living. That article responded to the roiling canard, widely used to market senior living, that loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s hard for senior living operators and investors to understand that CCRCs are not in and of themselves the solution. Loneliness runs deeper than a developer-built community.

AI Is Not the Solution

Paul Bloom called attention to loneliness in a New Yorker article in the July 21, 2025, issue of the New Yorker. It’s one of those articles that go on and on with clever abandon. The ambiguous title in the digital edition is “A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem.” The title is different in the magazine.

I read the article so you don’t have to. It can be summed up in a sentence from the concluding paragraph: “When we numb ourselves to loneliness, we give up the hard work of making ourselves understood, of striving for true connection, of forging relationships built on mutual effort.”

The idea is that even if artificial intelligence (AI) companionship can seem empathetic, it’s still just a machine. An ulterior thesis is that, if a person is lonely, it’s their fault. They ought to reach out more and be more social.

Plush Toys

That took me back to a time early in my residency in a CCRC when Paro, the animated seal, was the height of senior living technology. It cost a lot, and there were depictions of happy people, lost in the fog of advanced dementia, cuddling and caring for their robotic seals.

Reflecting on the use of AI as the cure for loneliness, Paul Bloom states, “Most obviously, loneliness could go the way of boredom. I’m old enough,” he continues, “to remember when being bored was just a fact of life.” To tell the truth, slogging now through this New Yorker article was boring for me. I guess boredom is still “a fact of life.” Mr. Bloom is 61, and I am 88.

AI Is NO T the Solution

Enough. I’m going to draw a line under the notion that AI is the answer to loneliness. AI is not human, and it is not the answer to a human’s emotional challenges. Loneliness is the consequence of an internal dialogue with oneself that centers on the question of whether a person has worth.

That painful dialogue can begin with the perception that one is unacceptable to others whom the perceiver envies. I know. I often get that feeling when there’s a party in our CCRC and all the tables are staked out for friends of the table holder. There’s no place where people of my age group are unconditionally welcome. It may be irrational, but the pain is real. It can be hard to feel you fit in when there’s no welcoming table.

Is Loneliness Grieving?

That leads to a completely different line of thought from the notion that a squirming plush seal can alleviate the cold grasp of loneliness. Loneliness may be a kind of grieving for a sense of belonging that one once had but has lost. After all, old age is often unattractive. An artificial assurance of inner beauty is no comfort for the rejected oldster.

In the earlier article, I touched on age-related loneliness. That is directly pertinent to the corporate approaches that prevail in today’s senior living industry. Perhaps that kind of loneliness, common in CCRCs, is a sense that, in the eyes of management, staff, and younger residents, an oldster no longer matters. It’s a realization that your demise will go barely noticed, except that for management, it will free a residential unit for resale.

Are Alternatives Less Lonely?

Perhaps that’s why new approaches to aging, ranging from the Village Movement to co-housing, are gaining currency. In such mutual support enterprises, every individual belongs as much as older family members belonged for life in the farm families of the 19th century.

In a sociological sense, today’s alienation and loneliness are prevalent among older people. The reality of loneliness in senior living, though, requires an understanding of individuals more than academically sterile phenomenological and statistical insights. The academics quickly move toward quantification by distinguishing “social isolation (the objective state of having few social relationships or infrequent social contact with others) and loneliness (a subjective feeling of being isolated).”

Beyond Academic Sterility

It’s easier in academic contexts to deal quantitatively with what can be readily measured or counted than to solve a core cultural challenge. The cited study reports that 43% of adults over age 60 feel lonely, and it implies from data for a sample of those 45 and older that feelings of loneliness increase with age. CCRCs undoubtedly help some of those who become residents, but loneliness remains a central senior living phenomenon.

To get a conversation started that might address this salient issue, let’s make an observation. In most CCRCs, there is a life enrichment director or activities director who reports to management. The bulk of the enrichment budget is spent on outsiders who bring activities into the CCRC, rather than on resident-initiated, resident-led programs for their fellow residents.

Most of this could be coordinated by a resident or group of residents without a director accountable to management. Of course, there is a need to coordinate the calendar, and that can be handled at a clerical level or even automated with artificial intelligence to optimize timings. Also, there is a question of whether residents who take on this kind of responsibility should be paid as long as their performance meets standards.

Let’s start the conversation by asking, “Why does management control and direct programs to provide activities for residents? Why can’t residents be empowered to be the primary engine for the activities that define the community? Why are residents excluded from staff?” We’ll leave it there, for now.