Smart Homes as Infrastructures of Social Life: Social Connections and Domestic Order

We examine how Smart Home technologies intersect withresidents’ social connections, feelings of loneliness, andeveryday family dynamics. Through a two-week cultural probestudy we explore how people living with smart devicesdescribe changes in social ties, roles, and domestichierarchies in relation to their quality of life andwell-being. Our analysis shows that participants do notposition Smart Homes as social companions. Instead, theyframe them as infrastructural systems that manage theenvironment while indirectly reshaping routines, choredistributions, and experiences of presence/ absence,control, care and dependence. This suggests that SmartHomes influence social life less through direct emotionalconnection and more through the background conditions thatstructure everyday domestic relations.