The data of care: Intergenerational lives between support and surveillance

Abstract

This commentary analyzes how the digitalization and datafication of informal care transform the temporal, gendered, and intergenerational dynamics of family caregiving. Technologies such as sensors, apps, and AI-driven platforms promise support and efficiency, yet they introduce new temporal regimes that redefine what counts as "good care." Building on feminist ethics of care, feminist data studies, and theories of temporality, the text argues that digital systems create a form of moral temporalization: caregivers are evaluated through their speed of response to algorithmic alerts rather than through presence or relational attentiveness. These transformations can also be situated within broader processes of value individualization, whereby responsibility for care becomes increasingly personalized, monitored, and moralized at the level of individual family members. These shifts carry social consequences. Digital care generates invisible technical and temporal labor-particularly borne by women-while reshaping intergenerational relations by granting younger, technologically skilled family members greater temporal authority over older adults. As care becomes increasingly governed by algorithmic time, the boundary between support and surveillance blurs. The commentary calls for rethinking temporality as a central ethical dimension of datafied care.