Observational studyJMIR formative research2024
Role of Synchronous, Moderated, and Anonymous Peer Support Chats on Reducing Momentary Loneliness in Older Adults: Retrospective Observational Study.
Observational study in JMIR formative research, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Use of Digital Peer Support for Employee Well-Being: Retrospective Analysis Across Five Large Employers.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Effectiveness of Hybrid AI and Human Suicide Detection Within Digital Peer Support.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Elevated prodromal psychotic symptoms lead to impaired social functioning via loneliness: A longitudinal mediation study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Alone together online: a mixed-methods analysis of loneliness, recognition, and peer response in a public digital community.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Exploring the Impact of Digital Peer Support Services on Meeting Unmet Needs Within an Employee Assistance Program: Retrospective Cohort Study.JMIR human factors · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOlder adults have a high rate of loneliness, which contributes to increased psychosocial risk, medical morbidity, and mortality. Digital emotional support interventions provide a convenient and rapid avenue for additional support. Digital peer support interventions for emotional struggles contrast the usual provider-based clinical care models because they offer more accessible, direct support for empowerment, highlighting the users' autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
objectiveThis study aims to examine a novel anonymous and synchronous peer-to-peer digital chat service facilitated by trained human moderators. The experience of a cohort of 699 adults aged ≥65 years was analyzed to determine (1) if participation, alone, led to measurable aggregate change in momentary loneliness and optimism and (2) the impact of peers on momentary loneliness and optimism.
methodsParticipants were each prompted with a single question: "What's your struggle?" Using a proprietary artificial intelligence model, the free-text response automatched the respondent based on their self-expressed emotional struggle to peers and a chat moderator. Exchanged messages were analyzed to quantitatively measure the change in momentary loneliness and optimism using a third-party, public, natural language processing model (GPT-4 [OpenAI]). The sentiment change analysis was initially performed at the individual level and then averaged across all users with similar emotion types to produce a statistically significant (P<.05) collective trend per emotion. To evaluate the peer impact on momentary loneliness and optimism, we performed propensity matching to align the moderator+single user and moderator+small group chat cohorts and then compare the emotion trends between the matched cohorts.
resultsLoneliness and optimism trends significantly improved after 8 (P=.02) to 9 minutes (P=.03) into the chat. We observed a significant improvement in the momentary loneliness and optimism trends between the moderator+small group compared to the moderator+single user chat cohort after 19 (P=.049) and 21 minutes (P=.04) for optimism and loneliness, respectively.
conclusionsChat-based peer support may be a viable intervention to help address momentary loneliness in older adults and present an alternative to traditional care. The promising results support the need for further study to expand the evidence for such cost-effective options.
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