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YoungHappy Thai Innovation That Helps The Elderly Stays Young and Happy Always

The elderly is a group of people often forgotten after retirement. Most of them tend to stay at home alone and deprive of social life. They lack self-care and their healths start to decline. This can lead to deteriorating physical and mental health. But today, there is a Thai innovation that helps change the elder’s life for the better. This platform is YoungHappy, which Innovation Thailand will introduce you to its origin and how it is an innovation that creates value for the elderly.

Inspiration that Created YoungHappy

It started from Mr. Thanakorn Phromyos’s family, founder and CEO of YoungHappy Company Limited, or YoungHappy. He has retired parents who he must take care of, so he looked for things to keep them well. He realized that the elderly group lacks social standing. They have no activity and feel lonely, empty, depressed, sick and lack vitality in life. This caused Mr. Promyod to want to take care of the elderly’s mental health and bring them into the digital world. By giving the elderly access to social media and teaching them to use technology and how to update various information, they feel they are still a part of the society. This gives them feeling of worth and value to the society, under YoungHappy’s concept of “having fun, feeling valued, and being self-reliant”.

The Innovative Aspect of YoungHappy

YoungHappy is both an offline and online community for the elderly. In the past, the elderly congregates into groups of friends within their hospitals or various clubs they are members to. But we created YoungHappy as communities between generations. That is, the new generation help take care of the elderly in the created communities and the elderly from anywhere can join these online communities. This gives the elderly chances to meet each other, learn new things, and create Lifelong Learning or “Upskill” for them. They make friends with people of the same age group. They have conversations, play games, and take parts in online challenges. For example, every month there will be 15 daily problems to solve, based on the theme of each month. The key focus is to keep them active. There are also volunteer activities to utilize their skills while helping to contribute value to the society.

YoungHappy Revitalizes The Life of the Elderly

YoungHappy is a place for the elderly to be happy, have lifelong learning, gain new skills, and meet new friends, while having the youths from their kids or grandkids’ age to take care of them. This helps build confidence to the elderly and make them realize that they are still appreciated.

Future Outlook of the Elderly in Thailand

In our society, there are more elderly than young people. Every lifestyle trend must, therefore, be more supportive of the elderly. As such, any innovation must also take into account and be designed for the elderly too. Basically, innovation cannot consider the elderly as an option, but the design of the product must be favorable to the elderly too.

Future Development

There must be more channels for learning new skills. More features must be added to increase happiness. The elderly must participate in organizing activities and designing new features. And there should be more cooperation with various partners who are interested in organizing activities for the elderly. Or even knowledgeable elders who want to share their knowledge to those in the same age group or younger can utilize the platform as a central media hub.

YoungHappy is a Thai innovation that “revive the lives of the elderly for more happiness and value”. It is like an orientation area for those entering retirement age with the aim to create space for them to remain happy and appreciated. In the future, more features will be added for further social participation by the elderly and to expand to elders in the provinces. Thai society will be an aging society with true quality and happiness.