What has Covid-19 Pandemic brought about on the well-being of the elderly – a tentative observation from the viewpoint of social capital and AI in Japan

Corona pandemic has a devastating impact for social capital (SC)of the elderly, preventing them from interacting with the outside world, interfering with people’s physical connections. Since SC is strongly associated with quality of life (QOL)(Inaba 2016), the deterioration of SC could bring about decline in their wellbeing both physically and mentally. On the other hand, the pandemic has promoted the penetration of ICT and AI which have helped the elderly in mitigating the negative impact of the pandemic by enabling them to access to various sites through the internet. That is the negative impact of the pandemic could be offset by ICT and AI.