Researchers reveal three ways distrust shapes older adults' tech use

In a new paper on arXiv, "Towards Designing for (Dis)Trust in Technologies for Aging," researchers Muhid Hassan Risvy, Dimitrios Theodoratos, and Alisha Pradhan synthesize decades of empirical studies to answer a surprisingly under-explored question: should we design for older adults' distrust, not just their trust? The team reviewed prior HCI studies where older adults explicitly discussed trust and distrust in technology, looking for patterns across cohorts and device generations.

Their analysis identifies three constitutive elements of (dis)trust. First, distrust emerges when material arrangements of digital systems become illegible—for example, when older users cannot determine where their information is stored or trace how it moves between services. Second, trust is temporally fluid: it builds and shifts through accumulated experience and breakdowns, never static across a product's lifetime. Third, distrust can operate as intentional boundary work—a deliberate strategy older adults use to limit technology's reach into their autonomy, relationships, and everyday lives. Rather than labeling distrust as a barrier to overcome, the authors argue it is an important signal that should inform design. They propose directions such as making data persistence and movement more perceptible, and supporting trust across different phases of use from onboarding to long-term maintenance. The paper provides a foundation for designers and researchers working on technologies for aging populations.