Robot pets hollow caregiving

Robotic companion animals, marketed as therapeutic aids (for example, Tombot’s Jennie for dementia), can substitute for human touch and social visits and thereby reduce family and community caregiving labor. This creates a cheaper, scalable form of ‘care’ that preserves user convenience but risks eroding human duties, emotional growth through suffering, and social accountability for elders. — If adopted widely and approved by regulators, robot pets could reshape where responsibility for elder wellbeing sits — with families, markets, or machines — changing care policy, regulation, and social norms.