Smart Home Devices and Mental Health: Mostly a Story About Connection

We have written a lot on this blog about technology that helps people stay in their own homes. Fall-detecting watches. Voice assistants. Daily check-in calls. Cameras and smart locks. A fair question follows. Do these devices actually make older adults feel better, or do they only make their families feel better?

A new study in Scientific Reports offers a careful answer. It is encouraging. It is also modest, but the modesty is the useful part.

What the Researchers Did

The authors, led by Lifen Zheng and Li Wang, used three rounds of the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey, taken in 2018, 2020, and 2023. They followed 4,541 adults aged 60 and older through all three rounds. The authors note that more than 90 percent of older adults prefer to age in place, which is the reason they chose the question.

In 2018, they counted how many of eight types of smart devices each person used. The list is broader than the phrase “smart home” suggests. It includes a smart wheelchair, an electronic blood pressure monitor, a blood lipid analyzer, a smartwatch or bracelet, a smart camera with remote monitoring, a smart home assistant, a sleep monitor, and an audio reading device. 

In 2020, they measured how much social interaction each person had, and how much benefit each person got from being online, such as convenience in shopping, health information, and communication. In 2023, they measured mental health with nine items from a revised depression scale, scored so that higher is better. They accounted for gender, age, marital status, education, self-rated health, chronic conditions, daily-living limitations, and each person’s mental health at the start.

Spreading the measurements across five years let the researchers look at what came first, not just what traveled together.

What They Found

Older adults who used more devices in 2018 had better mental health in 2023, even after the researchers accounted for how those people were doing at the start.

The more interesting finding is how that happened. Once the researchers added social interaction and online benefits to the model, the direct effect of the devices disappeared. The devices weren't lifting mood on their own. They worked through people and through convenience. Device use was linked to more contact with family and friends. That contact was linked to getting more out of technology. Both were linked to better mental health later. 

In plain terms, the gadget was not the cure. The connection and the convenience it made possible were.

Why the Modest Effects Matter

The authors are candid that the effects are small. They describe the impact as “more incremental than transformative.” They also say the devices are one part of a broader set of supports for aging in place, not a stand-alone answer.

For families, that is the honest takeaway. A device is not a substitute for a visit, a phone call, or a neighbor who knows to knock. It works best when it makes those things more likely.

What the Study Cannot Tell Us

The study has some limitations that one must keep in mind:

• It is Observational: The measurements are spread across time, which helps, but it does not prove the devices caused the improvement. People who adopt technology may differ from people who do not in ways the study did not capture. The authors did not control for income, wealth, or homeownership.

It counts device types, not use: The measure records whether someone uses each of eight device types. It does not record how often or how well.

It was done in mainland China: The findings may not translate well to Ohio or Missouri, or the United States, and some of the devices counted aren't what an American family would call a smart home product.

The timing of the middle steps is not fully established: Social interaction and online benefits were measured in the same round.

How This Fits What We Have Already Written

This study does not overturn earlier posts. It sharpens them.

In April 2025, we wrote about reports that frequent technology use may slow cognitive decline. That post drew on a news report. This study doesn't measure thinking skills, but it shows a parallel pattern in mood. The value seems to lie less in the device than in staying engaged.

In March 2025, we reviewed smart home health technologies and the evidence behind them, and we said they work best alongside legal planning. That advice still stands. This study adds that they also work best alongside people.

In September, we wrote about daily wellness check-in services and called them one layer of support, not an emergency system. The new study supports that layered view. It did not test check-in services, and an automated call is not the same as the family contact the study measured. Still, a check-in that leads to a real conversation is worth more than one that ends with a tap. 

And in our 2026 smart home toolkit, we said aging in place is about living well at home, not just staying there. Voice reminders, fall alerts that reach a family member, and a lock that removes the struggle with keys all lower small daily barriers. Those reductions free up attention and energy for the contact the study found matters most. The toolkit’s cautions about privacy and involving the older adult in setup still apply. A device that feels like surveillance is unlikely to produce the connection the study measured.

Most importantly, the study supports our repeated emphasis on home (e.g.,"The Heart of Home Care: Why Family Is the Ultimate Key to Successful Aging in Place and “I Just Want to Be Home”: Emily Ladau’s Powerful Senate Testimony and Why It Matters for Every Senior Aging in Place) and family (e.g., "Family Caregiving: The Powerful Key to Successful Aging in Place" and "The Heart of Home Care: Why Family Is the Ultimate Key to Successful Aging in Place." Whether a family or home is natural or chosen, the combination of both home and family creates the conditions that support a person's health and well-being.

Your Plan

    •Start Small and Match the Tool to the Person: Choose one or two devices that solve a real daily problem or make it easier to stay in touch with family. Prefer relationship-focused tools, such as video calls, shared reminders, and simple check-ins, over pure monitoring.

•    Decide Who May Manage the Devices and Accounts: A watch, tablet, or companion device usually sits behind an account, password, and terms of service. If you lose capacity, someone must be able to keep it running. Your documents should say who can access your digital accounts and devices, and under what authority. Ohio addresses fiduciary access to digital assets in Chapter 2137 of the Revised Code, and your estate planning documents should be written with it in mind.

    •Put Your Own Consent in Writing: Cameras, motion sensors, and location tracking raise real privacy questions, especially if capacity declines. Say now what you are comfortable with, and how you can pause or decline a feature, instead of leaving your family guessing.

    •Tie the Technology to Your Goals: If your aging-in-place directive says you want to remain at home, the tools that make that possible, and the people paying for them, should be named in your plan. Your financial agent or successor trustee must be able to pay the subscription and the aide.

    •Plan for the Human Part: If the study is right, the best technology plan is one that increases contact with real people. Choose tools your family will actually use, and give the people who use them clear permission to act.

The Bottom Line

Smart devices appear to help older adults’ mental health, mostly by helping them stay connected and by making daily life easier. The effect is real but small. They are not a treatment for depression, and they do not replace in-person contact, medical care, or a well-drafted plan for decision-making and care. Treat technology as one piece of a plan that also includes people, money, and good documents.

Who Was Isolating Whom? A Michigan Will and Guardianship Contest and the Two Faces of Family Conflict

In April 2016, an 88-year-old Michigan man named Brownie Kachar stood in his kitchen holding a barbecue fork. His son Stanley and the home-care nurses had been discussing his care without him. Brownie was angry. He insisted he should be making decisions about his own care. The argument escalated. Brownie felt threatened, and he picked up the fork “to defend himself.”

Daniel drove his father to the hospital that day. At the hospital afterward, a doctor told the family that Brownie could go home with round-the-clock nursing or go to a rehabilitation facility. The choice, the doctor said, was up to him. The family took a vote in the room. Brownie, his son Daniel, and his daughter Karen voted for home. Stanley and Brownie’s brother voted for the facility. As Daniel later recalled, Brownie reminded everyone, “this is a democracy, it is a majority.”  It didn’t go that way. Stanley filed an emergency guardianship petition, and Brownie went to the facility.  

Three months later, Brownie signed a new will. It left his real estate and the rest of the estate to Daniel and Karen and disinherited Stanley and his other son, Nicholas. Six years after that, Brownie died. Stanley claimed the new will was the product of undue influence. In In re Estate of Kachar, (Mich. Ct. App. Sept. 8, 2026) (unpublished), the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the will. The legal holding is ordinary. The opinion binds no one. What makes the case worth studying is that it can be read two ways. 

Each side told a believable story about the other side isolating Brownie. That is the same pattern we described in "Isolation Through Manufactured Conflict": a crisis, a rupture, silence, then new papers. The sequence is a disguise. It looks identical from the outside whether the parent has been captured or is taking his name back. This article is about how to tell those stories apart, and how planning could have kept the family out of court.

The Plan That Put Everything in One Pair of Hands

In 2002, Brownie signed a will that divided his real estate among his three sons and the rest of the estate among all four children. He named Stanley as executor. The same day, he named Stanley as his health care agent and his financial agent under durable powers of attorney.  That was a common plan, and a reasonable one at the time. It was also brittle. Every lever sat in one pair of hands. When Brownie’s anger turned on Stanley, there was no one else with authority to turn to. The fight over Brownie’s care became a fight over Stanley’s power.

The Spring of 2016: The Fight Over Going Home

In November 2015, Brownie suffered a traumatic brain injury in a head-on collision. He was in a coma for a time. Testing in January 2016 found real deficits: trouble with memory, planning, numbers, and impulsivity. He couldn’t live on his own without help.

Stanley managed his care. By all accounts, the family worked together at first. Then came the kitchen argument, the vote, the guardianship petition, and the facility. Brownie wanted out. His lawyer, Peter Fales, drove an hour and a quarter to visit him and found that he “emphatically wanted to get out.” Brownie was furious with Stanley. Stanley didn’t visit him at the facility. The family stopped speaking to each other.

In late May, Brownie went to court himself and revoked Stanley’s health care power of attorney. The court appointed a neutral guardian. In July, clinical psychologist Peter Lichtenberg evaluated him. On August 1, the court replaced the neutral guardian with a limited co-guardianship. Daniel and Karen got authority to pay bills and make medical and placement decisions, and nothing more. That same day, Brownie went home

.Also that same day, Daniel dropped Brownie off at Fales’s office to talk about a new will. Two days later, Brownie signed it.

Two Stories, Both Plausible

Stanley’s story was that his siblings captured their father. The record gave him material:

• Daniel and Karen were Brownie’s guardians when he signed the will. They benefited from it.
• Daniel drove Brownie to the lawyer’s office.
• The lawyer emailed Daniel and Karen about Brownie’s plan to change his will, asked them for a copy of the old will, and scheduled the signing through them.
• Daniel and Karen paid the psychologist and the lawyer’s fee, and they held the original will afterward.
• Daniel was present for the entire competency evaluation.
• Daniel changed the locks on Brownie’s post office box and took over his mail.
• Karen asked the care manager to stop talking to Stanley.
• A later medical record noted, “Daughter states only Dan and herself should see patient.” Karen testified this was because Nicholas was encouraging him to drive.
• The care manager testified that Brownie was “possibly” under Daniel and Karen’s control.
• When a permanent guardianship was later being drafted, Karen wrote that she wanted the psychologist’s evaluation in the record “so [Stanley] has no leg to stand on in the future.”
• Stanley and Nicholas testified that Daniel and Karen disparaged Stanley to their father.

Daniel and Karen’s story was that Stanley walked away, and their father made his own choice. The record gave them material too:

• Stanley overrode his father’s wish to go home, had him admitted to a facility over his objection, and soon thereafter stopped visiting.
• On the way to the hospital after the kitchen argument, Brownie asked Daniel to take him to his lawyer’s office. The office was closed. That was before Daniel or Karen had any authority at all.
• Brownie told the lawyer he wanted a new will in a conversation Daniel and Karen weren’t part of.
• He met with the lawyer at the office without them.
• Neither was present when he signed. Neither saw the will beforehand.
• Everyone agreed Brownie was “extremely strong-willed.” His nurses later took him to the casino.
• The psychologist wrote that Stanley “got greedy for control” and hadn’t visited since the argument, in Brownie’s own words.

Both stories are true in part. That is often how these cases look.  

Hold those two files up against the markers in the isolation article — timeline, whose words, seen alone, instruments moving toward the gatekeeper — and the file will not sit still. The shift after a crash looks manufactured. The fork, the vote, and the facility are Brownie’s own sentences. Daniel driving him to the lawyer looks like chaperoning. Fales meeting him alone, twice, and keeping the beneficiaries out of the signing room cuts the other way. Documents moving toward the new guardians within two days of their appointment looks like the last stage of the pattern. A father who could still explain why he was angry, in detail, when no one else was talking for him, looks like estrangement he chose. The method works as a disguise because the sequence does not tell you which column you are in. The voice in the room does.

How the Court Decided

Michigan presumes undue influence when a fiduciary benefits from a transaction and had the opportunity to influence it. A guardian is a fiduciary. So the presumption applied, and Daniel and Karen had to produce evidence to rebut it. The burden of proving undue influence stayed with Stanley.

The probate court found the presumption rebutted, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Its reasons are the useful part:

• Brownie started it. His first move toward a new will came before Daniel and Karen had any authority, when he asked to be driven to his lawyer’s office.

• He met with the lawyer on his own, twice. The lawyer’s own email showed a conversation about the will that Daniel and Karen learned about afterward.

• Capacity was confirmed days before signing. Lichtenberg wrote, “I have no doubts that he is capable of making a new will. His decision making abilities are a strength.”

• The beneficiaries stayed away: They weren’t present at the signing and never saw the draft.

• His reasons were his own. Brownie was angry about being put in the facility against his will, about the vote, and about a $50,000 loan he believed Stanley never repaid.

• No bargain. Nothing showed Daniel and Karen promised to take him home if he changed his will. Until August 1 they had no power to send him home. By the time they did, he was already there.

The court acknowledged that Brownie was at times delusional, paranoid, and volatile after his injury. It still found that his decision to disinherit Stanley reflected specific grievances he formed himself.

One detail deserves attention. The lawyer investigated the $50,000 loan and found no record of it. Brownie may well have been wrong about it. It didn’t matter. Under Michigan law, as under Ohio law, a competent person may leave his property unfairly, unwisely, or for reasons his family thinks are mistaken. The question is whether the will is his. Whether it is fair is a different question.

Lessons for Families and Planners

    • Exclusion breeds agitation.  The barbecue fork wasn’t random. Brownie had a brain injury, and he was being discussed as though he wasn’t in the room. People with cognitive injuries often cannot follow the conversation, but they can still feel dismissed. That feeling drives agitation, and agitation gets read as proof that the person can’t participate. It becomes a cycle. An observation-first approach to care starts by including the person in decisions about his own life as far as he is able. Brownie’s plan fell apart over the question of where he would live. That is the central question of aging in place.

    • Don’t put every role in one person.  One child as executor, health care agent, and financial agent is efficient until that child becomes the one the parent is angry with. Separate the roles. Name a health care agent from one part of the family and a financial agent from another. Add a successor who is already informed. When a relationship breaks, the plan should still work.

   • Capacity depends on the decision.  The same psychologist found that Brownie couldn’t manage his finances or decide what level of care he needed. He also found that Brownie could decide where to live and who his guardian should be, and that he had the capacity to make a will. The court said it directly: a person can be under guardianship and still have testamentary capacity. Families often assume otherwise. They shouldn’t.

  • Process won the case, and process nearly lost it.  The lawyer did the essentials right. He listened to his client alone, obtained a capacity opinion before signing, kept the beneficiaries out of the room, and didn’t show them the will. Those facts carried the day.  He also did several things that gave Stanley his case:

That last gap is notable, because Lichtenberg is a leading researcher on exactly that question. His Financial Decision Screening Scale, the tool we pointed to in the isolation article, was designed to look for influence, not only for knowledge of assets.

Three months after the will, Fales prepared the petition to make Daniel and Karen permanent co-guardians. Stanley argued that the petition listed Daniel as petitioner and Fales as his attorney. Fales testified that he was carrying out Brownie’s wish to have his son appointed. The court accepted that Fales represented Brownie alone, while noting that he “walked the line.” The November petition is not evidence of how the August will was procured. It is evidence of how easily the lawyer’s file can be made to look like the children’s file.

In Ohio, the Rules of Professional Conduct on confidentiality (Rule 1.6), conflicts (Rule 1.7), third-party payment (Rule 1.8(f)), and clients with diminished capacity (Rule 1.14) all point the same way. Communicate with the client, even when that is harder. Keep the beneficiaries away from the process, including the scheduling and the fee. Ask the evaluator to address undue influence, not just capacity.

    • Plan for the dispute while the person can still speak.  Ohio offers a tool Michigan families didn’t use here.  Under Ohio Rev. Code § 5817.02, a person can ask the probate court to declare a will valid during his lifetime. Only the testator can file. A person under guardianship would need the capacity to bring the case himself, and the court would weigh his situation carefully. But when a family fight is already underway and a new will changes everything, it is worth considering. Updating a nomination of guardian as relationships change is the other lesson. Brownie’s 2002 documents still pointed to Stanley after he no longer trusted him, and undoing them took a court fight.

    • A no-contest clause wouldn’t have helped.  Brownie lived six more years after signing his will, and the court fight lasted four years after his death.  Stanley received nothing under the 2016 will. A clause can’t take anything from someone who was left nothing. Deterrence requires something at stake.

    • Record the fight while it is happening. If you are the child who is being cut out, the time to record isolation, missed visits, driving bans, and who is scheduling the lawyer is during the guardianship, not after the funeral. A presumption gets you past a motion. It does not win the trial.

    • Guardianship makes the guardian the villain:  A year after the will, Brownie accused Daniel and Karen of “bullying” him. They had stopped him from driving, as his doctors and the court required. Karen once had to call the police and an ambulance to get him to a blood test. She eventually resigned. Whoever holds authority over an unhappy person tends to become the target of his anger. Stanley learned that in the spring of 2016. Daniel and Karen learned it in 2017. The limited guardianship left Brownie in charge of his own money and much of his life. That helped. The best plan still avoids guardianship where it can.

The Real Question

It’s tempting to read Kachar as a story about which child loved their father more. That question can’t be answered, and the law doesn’t ask it. The law asks whether the will reflects the mind of the person who signed it.

Brownie Kachar was injured, angry, sometimes wrong about the facts, and very much himself. He wanted to go home. He wanted a say in his own care. When he didn’t get it, he changed his will. Some people will think that was unfair to Stanley. The court’s answer was that it was Brownie’s decision to make.

Good planning can’t prevent a family from fracturing. It can, however, make sure that when it does, the person at the center still has a voice, and that the record shows it. 

Good planning will not make a family kind. It will, however, make it harder for the next emergency petition to become the last estate plan.