New app allows senior citizens to order ‘on-demand grandkids’

To fight off loneliness, senior citizens are using technology in a unique way by ordering kids or robots ‘on-demand’ with the help of an app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, an app called ‘Join Papa’ lets senior citizens combat their loneliness where they can call ‘on-demand grandkids’ similar to how one orders food or car.

“They’re all very nice and, you know, I’ll converse with them and find out what they’re doing and studying and so forth,” 87-year-old Marilyn Sumkin told the newspaper about the app. “It’s for me a very important service.”

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The app pays college-age young people $10 per hour for helping the old people by shopping, performing household chores or simply hanging out with them. However, the app charges $17 and pockets the difference for the robotic grandchildren, wrote Futurism.

Essentially, Join Papa is an effort to use technology in fighting off the growing crisis on loneliness. Sumkin told the publication that Join Papa gig workers were, along with a bi-weekly stretching class, were her only human contact.