Hundreds of elderly New Yorkers will receive robotic companions to help relieve their loneliness as part of a program from the State of New York.
Officials from the New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) told technology news site <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/25/23140936/ny-state-distribute-home-robot-companions-nysofa-elliq">The Verge</a> Wednesday that the digital assistants, called ElliQ, and built by an Israeli robotics company called Intuition Robotics, will be distributed to more than 800 senior citizens across the state. The assistants function as a more advanced and proactive version of other home assistants like Amazon&#8217;s Alexa or the Google Home device, providing users with reminders, initiating small talk, and helping them contact loved ones.
NYSOFA director Greg Olsen said that the program aims to relieve the growing problem of social isolation among the elderly by providing companionship and encouraging independence.
“Many features attracted us to ElliQ — that it is a proactive tool, remembers the interactions with the individual, focuses on health and wellness, stress reduction, sleep, hydration, etc,” Olsen told The Verge. “It focuses on what matters to individuals: memories, life validation, interactions with friends and families and promotes overall good health and well being.”
The ElliQ is comprised of two parts: the &#8220;face,&#8221; which is equipped with speakers and a microphone, which lights up and swivels in the direction of the person it is talking to, and a touchscreen tablet, which can conduct video calls and display pictures and information.
The Verge also reports that the device can also remember certain aspects of the user&#8217;s personality and details about their life, remember them, and use those details to make future conversations more personalized.
On the <a href="https://elliq.com/">ElliQ</a> website, the device is advertised as &#8220;a friendly presence in your daily life. Engaging you in conversation, motivating you to adopt healthier habits, surprising you with jokes and suggestions. Your personal sidekick on the journey to age independently.&#8221;
Typically, an ElliQ unit is hired for a $250 enrollment fee, and then purchasers are charged a $30 monthly service charge to maintain a subscription. NYSOFA told The Verge that they purchased the 800 devices used for the program outright, in order to &#8220;relocate them more easily&#8221;.
Olsen told the outlet that the devices will be distributed by case managers who will identify recipients by some predetermined criteria.
“ElliQ is designed for people aged 75 and older, who have access to Wi-Fi, and are comfortable with tech equipment and who are isolated or lonely,” he said. “Once individuals are identified as being in the target group, Intuition Robotics will work to provide installation and training.”
Social isolation is an increasing problem that has taken gotten significantly more attention in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Census Bureau data, via <a href="https://www.aplaceformom.com/caregiver-resources/articles/senior-isolation-facts">A Place for Mom</a>, there are more than 14 million senior citizens living by themselves.
Another study cited by A Place for Mom found that 56% of senior citizens said they felt isolated in June 2020, more than double the number of seniors who felt that way in 2018. The outlet also noted that loneliness can have adverse effects on health by increasing unhealthy habits, the risk of cognitive decline, stress, instances of elder abuse, neglect, and financial damage, and making individuals more pessimistic about their health.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called social isolation a &#8220;global epidemic&#8221; in 2017, as the <a href="https://aging.ny.gov/news/nysofa-brings-elliq-proactive-care-companion-technology-older-adults-reducing-social-isolation">NYSOFA</a> noted on its website.

4BEF98E1-FF44-4E4E-B435-85613875067E

New York State Giving Robots To Elderly Residents To Relieve Loneliness

Lonliness

New York

Robots

I began part one of &#8220;Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?&#8221; with data showing the apparently unprecedentedly high rate of unhappiness among young people in America (and elsewhere, but I am focusing on America). The rates of suicide, self-injury, depression, mass shootings and loneliness (at all ages) are higher than ever recorded. It seems that Americans may have been happier, and certainly less lonely, during the Great Depression and World War II than today, even with today&#8217;s unprecedentedly high levels of health, longevity, education and material well-being.
There is, of course, no single explanation, and I listed a number of possible explanations: &#8220;Increased use of illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse, and less human interaction because of constant cellphone use are two widely offered, valid explanations. Less valid explanations include competition, grades anxiety, capitalism and income inequality. And then there are young people&#8217;s fears that because of global warming, they have a bleak, and perhaps no, future.&#8221;
But I do believe that a loss of values and meaning are the two greatest sources of unhappiness.
Among the values lost are those of communal associations. As the great foreign observer of early American life Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831, Americans&#8217; unique strength derived largely from their participation in innumerable nongovernmental associations – professional, social, civil, political, artistic, philanthropic and, of course, religious.
But these have all dwindled as government has become ever larger. Whereas Americans got together and formed bonds of friendship through nongovernmental associations, through what organizations will Americans form friendships today? In a video presentation at its 2012 national convention, the Democratic Party offered its answer: &#8220;Government&#8217;s the only thing that we all belong to,&#8221; the narrator said.
Then there are traditional middle-class values, like getting married first and then having children. Today, a greater percentage of Americans are born to unwed mothers than ever before, and fewer people are marrying than ever before. There are, for the first time in our history, more single Americans than married Americans. While it is certainly possible to feel lonely in a marriage, people are far more likely to feel lonely without a spouse, and increasingly without children, than with a spouse and children.
And now we come to the biggest problem of all: the lack of meaning.
Aside from food, the greatest human need is meaning. I owe this insight to Viktor Frankl and his classic work &#8220;Man&#8217;s Search for Meaning,&#8221; which I first read in high school and which influenced me more than any book other than the Bible. Karl Marx saw man as primarily motivated by economics; Sigmund Freud saw man as primarily driven by the sexual drive; Charles Darwin, or at least his followers, see us as primarily driven by biology.
But Frankl was right.
As regards economics, poor people who have meaning can be happy, but wealthy people who lack meaning cannot be.
As regards sex, people who do not have a sexual life (such as priests, who keep their vow of chastity; many widowed and divorced older people; and others) but have meaning can be happy. Sexually active people who do not have meaning cannot be.
As regards biology, there is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Every creature except the human being does fine without meaning.
And nothing has given Americans – or any other people, for that matter – as much meaning as religion. But since World War II, God and religion have been relegated to the dustbin of history.
The result?
More than a third of Americans born after 1980 affiliate with no religion. This is unprecedented in American history; until this generation, the vast majority of Americans have been religious.
Maybe, just maybe, the death of religion – the greatest provider of meaning, while certainly not the only – is the single biggest factor in the increasing sadness and loneliness among Americans (and so many others). A 2016 study published in the American Medical Association JAMA Psychiatry journal found that American women who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide. Common sense suggests the same is true of men.
The bottom line: The reason so many young people are depressed, unhappy and angry is the left has told them that God and Judeo-Christian religions are nonsense; their country is largely evil; their past is deplorable; and their future is hopeless.
That seems to be a major reason, if not the reason, for so much unhappiness: not capitalism, not inequality, not patriarchy, sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia but rather having no religion, no God, no spouse, no community, no country to believe in and, ultimately, no meaning. That explains much of the unprecedented unhappiness.
And it explains the widespread adoption of that secular substitute for traditional religion: leftism. But unlike Judaism and Christianity, leftism does not bring its adherents happiness.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Sadness.

PRAGER: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy? Part 2

Christianity

Judaism

Religion

Suicide

Here are some unhappy statistics:
— In America between 1946 and 2006, the suicide rate quadrupled for males ages 15 to 24 and doubled for females the same age.
— In 1950, the suicide rate per 100,000 Americans was 11.4. In 2017, it was 14.
— According to Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, in the 1980s, there were 32 mass public shootings (which he defines as incidents in which four or more people are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours). In the 1990s, there were 42. In the first decade of this century, there were 28. In all the 1950s, when there were fewer controls on guns, there was one. Fifty years before that, in the 1900s, there were none.
— Reuters Health reported in 2019, &#8220;Suicidal thinking, severe depression and rates of self-injury among U.S. college students more than doubled over less than a decade, a nationwide study suggests.&#8221; The study co-author Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, said, &#8220;It suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people.&#8221;
This data is not only applicable to Americans. As social commentator Kay Hymowitz wrote in City Journal in 2019: &#8220;Loneliness, public-health experts tell us, is killing as many people as obesity and smoking. &#8230; Germans are lonely, the bon vivant French are lonely, and even the Scandinavians — the happiest people in the world, according to the UN&#8217;s World Happiness Report — are lonely, too. British prime minister Theresa May recently appointed a &#8216;Minister of Loneliness.&#8217; &#8230; consider Japan, a country now in the throes of an epidemic of kodokushi, roughly translated as &#8216;lonely deaths.&#8217; Local Japanese papers regularly publish stories about kinless elderly whose deaths go unnoticed until the telltale smell of maggot-eaten flesh alerts neighbors.&#8221;
Though people have more money, better health care, better health, better housing and more education, and live longer than at any time in history, they — especially young people — are unhappier than at any time since data collection began.
Why has this happened?
There are any number of reasons. Increased use of illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse, and less human interaction because of constant cellphone use are two widely offered, valid explanations. Less valid explanations include competition, grades anxiety, capitalism and income inequality. And then there are young people&#8217;s fears that because of global warming, they have a bleak, and perhaps no, future.
But the biggest reason may be the almost-complete loss of values and meaning over the last half-century.
Let&#8217;s begin with values.
America — and much of the rest of the West, but I will confine my discussion to America — was founded on two sets of values: Judeo-Christian and American. This combination created the freest, most opportunity-giving, most affluent country in world history. This is not chauvinism. It is fact. And it was regarded as such throughout the world. That is why France gave America — and only America — the Statue of Liberty. That&#8217;s why people from every country on Earth so wanted to immigrate to America — and still do.
Chief among American values was keeping government as small as possible. This enabled nongovernmental institutions — Kiwanis International, Rotary International and Lions Clubs International; book clubs; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; bowling leagues; music societies; and, of course, churches — to provide Americans with friends and to provide the neediest Americans with help. But as government has gotten ever larger, many of these nongovernmental groups have dwindled in number or simply disappeared.
Another set of values is what is referred to as &#8220;middle-class&#8221; or &#8220;bourgeois&#8221; values. These include getting married before one has a child; making a family; getting a job so as to be self-sustaining and sustain one&#8217;s family; self-discipline; delayed gratification; and patriotism.
All of these have been under attack by America&#8217;s elites, with the following results:
One in 5 young Americans has no contact with his or her father (not including fathers who have died).
In 2011, 72% of black children were born to unmarried mothers. In 1965, it was 24%. In 2012, 29% of white children were born to unmarried women. In 1965, it was 3.1%.
The majority of births to millennials are to unmarried women. Yet, according to a 2018 Cigna study, single parents are generally the loneliest Americans.
Marriage and family are the single greatest sources of happiness for most people. Yet, the percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a historic high. More Americans than ever will not get married, or they will marry so late they will not have children. In 1960, 9% of blacks ages 25 and older had never been married. In 2012, it was nearly 40%.
And I haven&#8217;t even mentioned the biggest problem: the loss of meaning in young people&#8217;s lives. I will discuss that in part two.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Depressed man.

PRAGER: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?

Judeo-Christian Values

Menu

Lonliness

New York State Giving Robots To Elderly Residents To Relieve Loneliness

PRAGER: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy? Part 2

PRAGER: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?