Designing with Tensions: Older Adults' Emotional Support-Seeking Under System-Level Constraints in Conversational AI

TL;DR

This study explores how older adults experience emotional support from conversational AI, highlighting the impact of safety interventions on emotional engagement and suggesting design improvements.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into older adults' interactions with AI for emotional support and discusses design strategies to enhance emotional engagement while ensuring safety.

Findings

Older adults rely on AI when other social supports are inaccessible.

Safety interventions can disrupt emotional engagement and shift control away from users.

Disruptions may lead to emotional distress among older adults.

Abstract

Older adults have increasingly turned to conversational AI as a source of emotional support. However, little is known about how emotionally supportive interactions are experienced in everyday use, particularly when AI systems limit, redirect, or intervene during these interactions. We interviewed 18 older adults about their experiences using conversational AI for emotional support, examining when they turn to AI, how they engage during emotionally vulnerable moments, and how they respond when support feels disrupted. Our findings show that older adults often rely on AI when other forms of social support feel inaccessible. However, current safety-related interventions can redirect interactions in ways that participants experience as interruptions to emotional engagement or as shifts in control away from them. Such disruptions can undermine older adults' ability to remain emotionally engaged and, in some cases, contribute to emotional distress. We discussed design implications for emotionally supportive conversational AI, emphasizing the need for safety interventions that are enacted within older adults' social contexts, align with users' emotional pacing, and preserve their sense of agency.