Social applications may be particularly relevant for older adults, who are at risk of isolation and the severe negative impacts it can have on well-being and physical health [ 17 , 18 ]. activities like agent-facilitated group conversation may enhance older adults’ social lives as well as provide cognitive benefits and entertainment [ 19 20 ]. for example, agent facilitators could be deployed in group homes, com- munity centres, hospitals and care facilities, or even online through a video conferencing medium like zoom to enable and manage social networking among older adults. time of day, hours of work, and exhaustion would not be factors with an agent facilitator. such an agent facilitator could pro-vide conversational scaffolds for levelling the playing field among older adults of varying cognitive abilities, ensure that everyone has a say and that no one talks too much, offer prompts during lulls in conversation, and more. at present, the possibilities are vast and mostly uncharted for older adults. we also know little about the fit between voice-only, “bodyless” intelligent agents and older people [ 3 21 – 23 ]. older adults have long been considered a user group affected by a “digital divide” [ 24 26 ]. this “gap” is clos- ing as technology becomes ubiquitous in daily life, but is compounded when new form factors and interaction para- digms emerge, such as vuis [ 6 ]. one survey found that only