Residents at a retirement community in Los Gatos, California, are turning to virtual reality in a bid to make social connection feel less distant. At The Terraces, caregivers schedule sessions in which older adults—many in their 80s and 90s—sit together while using headsets that can place them in different worlds for a few minutes at a time. The programming is meant to support shared engagement, and after the headsets come off, residents often keep talking with each other.
One resident, 81-year-old Ginny Baird, described watching a dolphin pod while she paddled her arms alongside her chair during an underwater experience. Another participant reacted in real time to a different scenario: during a virtual hot-air balloon ride, one resident gasped, “Oh my God!” and another shuddered and said, “It’s hard to watch!” The sessions also include what residents describe as personal travel, taking older adults virtually back to the places where they grew up.
Rendever, the company providing the VR programming, said it has turned a technology that can be isolating into what it describes as a social connection tool. The AP report said Rendever’s VR content has been used in 800 retirement communities across the United States and Canada, with staff curating options for group use. The Terraces director of community life, Adrian Marshall, said the experience often becomes “a conversation starter” and that the sessions “really does connect people,” describing the programming as helping create “a human bridge” by giving residents a shared topic and experience.
The VR content can also be tailored to residents’ histories. The Terraces experience described by AP included virtual trips meant to show people their childhood neighborhoods—something some residents said may be their first chance to see those places in decades. Sue Livingstone, 84, said a virtual visit to her childhood neighborhood in New York City’s Queens borough helped bring back memories, and she suggested the VR could appeal even to residents who typically stay within their comfort zones.
Rendever is also seeking more formal evidence for its approach. The AP report said the company received a recent grant from the National Institutes of Health that will provide nearly $4.5 million to study ways to reduce social isolation among seniors living at home and their caregivers. Rendever’s work sits within a broader area of research that has looked at whether VR—when presented in a limited viewing format—can help older people maintain cognitive function and support social connection, while experts caution that screen-based activities still need guardrails.
Some researchers said VR should be treated as an addition to daily life rather than a substitute. Katherine “Kate” Dupuis, a neuropsychologist and professor at Sheridan College in Canada, said there is “always a risk of too much screen time,” but that if people use VR “cautiously, with meaning and purpose,” it can be helpful and offer older adults a chance “to engage with someone and share a sense of wonder.” Pallabi Bhowmick, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said older adults are willing to adapt to technology that is meaningful to them and pointed to the potential for VR to relieve stress, provide entertainment, and create connections with others, including in settings that can feel intergenerational.
The AP report also described how VR adoption in senior living is spreading beyond a single provider. It noted that Rendever competes with Dallas-based Mynd Immersive, and that some communities have used VR as a tool related to dementia care. Another Silicon Valley retirement village, the Forum, has used VR in part to engage residents, including a resident with dementia who nodded and smiled during a virtual hike through Glacier National Park in Montana as his wife celebrated his 83rd birthday.
Sallie Rogallo, who does not have dementia, said a virtual visit to the same park made her wish she were younger so she could do it again, adding that the experience allows people to leave the same environment and either go somewhere new or revisit familiar places. In another session at the Forum, 93-year-old Almut Schultz laughed while viewing a virtual classical music performance at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and she later appeared to want to play with a puppy featured in the VR program.