{"id":5280,"date":"2026-10-30T10:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T02:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/origin.shaid.org.cn\/cctv-news-what-smart-products-do-older-adults-want-most-the-answer-is-hidden-in-this-wishing-wall.html"},"modified":"2026-10-30T10:27:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T02:27:36","slug":"cctv-news-what-smart-products-do-older-adults-want-most-the-answer-is-hidden-in-this-wishing-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaid.org.cn\/en\/cctv-news-what-smart-products-do-older-adults-want-most-the-answer-is-hidden-in-this-wishing-wall.html","title":{"rendered":"CCTV News: What smart products do older adults want most? The answer is hidden in this ‘wishing wall’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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CCTV News: What smart products do older adults want most? The answer is hidden in this 'wishing wall'<\/h2><\/div><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n
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China’s elderly population continues to grow, and the country has rolled out multiple policies in succession to continuously promote the expansion and upgrading of age-friendly products and services. So, what exactly are the needs of older adults? Can the products and services currently on the market meet these expectations? Reporters visited multiple locations to listen to the real thoughts of older adults.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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Smart technology is developing rapidly<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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What kind of later life do you want?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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Some look forward to new technology, some value health and safety, and some hope for companionship to relieve loneliness. Data shows that in the first half of 2025, the manufacturing of smart and wearable devices for older adults grew by more than 30%. Silver-haired consumption is no longer centered only on ‘old, weak, and sick’; smart technology is entering the lives of more and more older adults.<\/p>\n

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Sun Mingxia, Director of the Institute of Sociology at the Shandong Provincial Institute of Macroeconomics: People are paying more attention to quality experience and emotional value, and are more focused on new consumption formats such as smart technology, health and wellness, and fashionable trends. Their lifestyle is shifting from frugal eldercare centered on basic old-age security to proactive aging that emphasizes quality and dignity.<\/p>\n

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02<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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Beneath Enormous Potential<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Can Supply Keep Up with Demand?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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Older people’s attitudes toward eldercare are shifting from ‘fearing hassle’ to ‘seeking novelty,’ and ever-escalating real-world needs are right before our eyes. Can the current market supply keep up with older people’s new expectations? The reporter continued to visit a number of different types of silver-haired products stores to see whether today’s age-friendly products on the market can catch the diverse needs of older people.<\/p>\n

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Guo Yuyu, Director of the Silver Economy Operations Center at a certain group: It is also the lightest walking stick on the market right now. It can rotate 360 degrees\u2014you can feel it for yourself.<\/p>\n

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A single small walking stick comes in dozens of styles, corresponding to the needs of different body weights and different scenarios. What the reporter felt first was the refinement of basic essential products. Citizen Zhou Zhaoren: There’s plenty of room to choose. This one is for sitting down and resting a while when you’re tired from walking\u2014quite nice.<\/section>\n
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But after visiting several stores, one can also see that most products on the market revolve around a few essential categories: walking assistance, rehabilitation, and home safety. Among smart products, the more common ones are safety and health products such as millimeter-wave fall-detection monitors and one-touch call devices. At the same time, the reporter also noticed that although customers streamed into the stores, most were older people or their children with clear, essential needs; active seniors who had retired only a few years earlier were, by contrast, rarely seen.<\/p>\n

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Citizen Tang Renjie: There aren’t many silver-haired stores around, so we can only get care from the internet or from community outreach.<\/p>\n

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Citizen Wei Yongqing: New things still need to be developed so that we have more choices. Right now it’s not quite satisfying\u2014it still needs to develop further.<\/p>\n

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Where are the novel products that older adults are looking forward to? The reporter found a trendy silver-haired store in Shanghai. This store is located in a densely populated commercial district in Shanghai, with a dazzling array of various products.<\/p>\n

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This type of new store targets the group of active older adults that traditional channels cannot reach, turning age-friendly products into everyday consumer goods. But nationwide, such new business formats are still mainly concentrated in a few cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.<\/p>\n

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Sun Mingxia, Director of the Social Research Institute at the Shandong Provincial Institute of Macroeconomics: At present, China’s elderly products market shows certain regional disparities, which also reflects the mismatch in the supply and demand structure of the silver economy. The three cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou alone account for nearly 20% of the country’s total silver economy, while the vast county-level lower-tier markets and ordinary cities have huge silver-haired consumer groups, and their supply of elderly care products and services still lags noticeably behind that of first-tier cities.<\/p>\n

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Experts told the reporter that while first-tier cities continue to see emerging new business formats, the supply in broader markets remains relatively undiversified. This misalignment in the supply and demand structure is precisely an important direction for the industry’s next supply upgrade.<\/p>\n

03<\/p>\n

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Making age-friendly technology<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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truly understand older adults<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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The needs of the elderly population have already moved forward, but the pace of market supply has not fully caught up. How can older adults with different needs all find age-friendly products that satisfy them? How can high-quality age-friendly technology benefit more older adults? We continue to explore paths to break through the dilemma.<\/p>\n

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CCTV reporter Song Wenjin: In this silver-haired store, we saw a wall covered with sticky notes, all filled with various wishes of the elderly\u2014AI reading glasses, simple cameras\u2014and the store regularly updates its products according to the elderly’s wishes.<\/p>\n

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The elderly write down whatever they want on sticky notes and post them up. Every three months, the store adjusts its products based on the elderly’s needs. CCTV reporter Song Wenjin: Will even a single person’s wish be fulfilled?<\/section>\n
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Ma Zhiwen, General Manager of a Shanghai company: Of course, because we believe every elderly person’s wish represents the needs of a certain group, so we treat them very seriously and see whether we can find products on the market that meet their needs.<\/p>\n

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Not only are products adjusted according to demand, but in response to the elderly’s consumption habit of trying first and deciding later, the store has also adapted its purchasing methods. For example, for the exoskeleton rehabilitation robots in the store, the store has specially launched a rental service, and many elderly people come specifically to inquire and try them out.<\/p>\n

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The rental model lowers the threshold for trying, so the elderly don’t have to bear high costs all at once\u2014they can experience first and then choose. Behind this is a shift in the supply approach of the silver economy market.<\/p>\n

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At the Jinan Senior University, the reporter saw that the school has specially set up a smart senior-friendly model room, with companion robots and various smart health-care devices brought in, so the elderly can try them out in their spare time between classes.<\/p>\n

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Zhao Bing, Vice President of Jinan Senior University: Senior universities now actually serve as intermediaries and hubs at both the supply and demand levels. The feedback has been very good; some students ask how to buy these products, and we also use our feedback channels to offer companies suggestions for product R&D and optimization.<\/p>\n

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At the health-care robotics training ground in Qingdao, Shandong, 45 companies and 217 products have already been brought in for training and iterative refinement. Products verified in real-world settings are also gradually entering real elderly care scenarios. At the smart health-care robot elderly care station in Yizhuang, Beijing, more than 40 various health-care robots have been deployed, covering functions such as meal delivery and assistance, rehabilitation training, and emotional companionship.<\/p>\n

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Tian Kan, Executive Vice Dean of the Institute of Elderly Care Services and Management at Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine: Judging from the current pace of robot development, I think it won’t be long before they can enter households, but at least for now, robot products won’t be very cheap. Of course, there are many marketing models for such high-end consumer products\u2014for example, for those with special needs, rentals are available, and various marketing methods can all be developed.<\/p>\n

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Technology is being refined, and efforts are also being made to lower the threshold for implementation. This year, Shandong included eight categories of products, such as walking-assistance exoskeletons and hearing aids, in the consumer goods trade-in subsidy program; Shanghai has built more than 220 community rental points, where exoskeletons, companion robots, and smart nursing beds can all be rented by the month, and eligible elderly people can also enjoy rental subsidies of 50% to 70%. At the national level, platforms are also being continuously built. Multiple departments have explicitly proposed promoting the deep application of artificial intelligence and big data in the elderly care sector, with a focus on developing smart elderly care products such as health monitoring, safety early warning, rehabilitation nursing, and emotional companionship; the three-year action plan for expanding capacity and improving quality in the rehabilitation assistive devices industry further specifies that by 2028, more than 50 key industrial technologies should be breakthroughs, driving rehabilitation assistive devices to make a comprehensive leap from ‘usable’ to ‘easy to use’ and ‘smart.’<\/p>\n

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From the handwritten notes on the wish wall, to the robots repeatedly debugged in the training base, to the policy networks being rolled out layer by layer, the distance from ‘elderly care’ to ‘enjoying old age’ is slowly being closed through these solid steps.<\/p>\n

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