The risks and opportunities of adopting digital technologies as part of unpaid care

Journal article

The integration of digital technologies into unpaid care work is rapidly transforming how families provide and experience care. This paper synthesizes existing research on how digital care technologies are reshaping unpaid care work in the Global North and urban China, with particular attention to their impact on inequality, privacy, and care quality. While these technologies offer benefits in terms of convenience, remote care capabilities, and improved coordination among caregivers, they simultaneously introduce significant risks that warrant critical attention. Our analysis reveals that digital care technologies can exacerbate existing social inequalities, with access and effective utilization often stratified along lines of gender, socioeconomic status, and geography. We identify serious privacy concerns operating at two levels: within families, where technologies can disturb traditional privacy boundaries, and in relation to technology companies, where intimate care data becomes commodified. The emergence of ‘transcendent’ caregiving, enabled by digital technologies, has introduced new possibilities for remote care while simultaneously creating challenges around work–life boundaries and caregiver burnout. Furthermore, the datafication of care practices, while offering a promise of quality and ‘scientific’ standards, risks reducing complex care relationships to quantifiable metrics at the expense of emotional and relational dimensions. Our findings suggest that digital care technologies are most effective when they augment rather than replace human care, and when implemented with careful consideration of privacy, equity, and the preservation of meaningful human connections. We conclude that while digital care technologies offer significant potential benefits, their implementation requires careful oversight and regulation to ensure they enhance rather than compromise care quality. These findings have important implications for policy-makers, particularly regarding the need for regulatory frameworks specifically addressing care technologies, and interventions to address digital inequalities in care contexts.

Authors: Hertog, E; Shi, L; Rodel, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Oxford Review of Economic Policy
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 987-1001
• Publication date: 2026-03-02
• DOI: 10.1093/oxrep/graf033
• EISSN: 1460-2121
• ISSN: 0266903X, 0266-903X
• Language: English
• Keywords: digital divide; inequality; unpaid care work; privacy; digital technologies