The main trend in 2021 will be technologies to combat loneliness, experts from the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor concluded. The firm's review says that with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of lonely people in the world has grown, and this is fraught with psychological health problems, RBC reports.
“2020 has shown us that loneliness is a fundamental health problem in society, to which we believe there will be an unprecedented technological response in 2021,” the experts concluded. According to them, in countries where 5G technologies have been introduced, the first examples of the use of augmented and virtual reality technologies in holographic communications will soon appear. In particular, the e-health market will see new AI-powered chat bots to help single people.
The trend towards a technological solution to the problem of loneliness is already visible. For example, in the United States during the pandemic, interest in dating services and chat bots skyrocketed. One of these applications – Replika – allows you to create a virtual friend for communication, choosing his appearance, voice and character traits, now almost a million people use it every month.
Services for mental health are also gaining popularity, for example, the meditation app Calm, which has grown from one million to four million over the past year. Russia also has an application to combat loneliness – Realy. The platform positions itself as a meeting place for those looking for friends.
