VinclesBCN — Tablets Against Unwanted Loneliness
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
✎ Corrected 27 Aug 2026 Publication date recorded for 5 sources. · 2 revisions in all What changed →
Barcelona's Social Rights department lends tablets and a companion app to residents over 65 who feel isolated, connecting them with family, friends and facilitator-led neighbourhood and interest groups via video calls, photos and messages. The project won the first European Bloomberg Mayors Challenge in autumn 2014, ran a pilot in five neighbourhoods from November 2016 to June 2017, passed a thousand active users citywide in December 2018 and reached 3,067 users and 198 groups by December 2021.
what does this mean?
The strongest source behind this entry is an independent peer-reviewed or academic study. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →📊 Impact
A 2024 peer-reviewed study (Beneito-Montagut et al., International Journal of Disaster Risk Science; 255 users surveyed, 12 user and 6 professional interviews) found the service became a lifeline during the pandemic, with entertainment as much as social support carrying it, and identified who it did not reach: non-use was strongly associated with being a woman, having a low educational level, having pre-existing social relationships, less time enrolled and a high perceived loneliness.
🎓 Lesson
The finding worth carrying is the one about non-use. A service designed against loneliness was used least by those who reported feeling loneliest — and by women and by people with less education. That is not a verdict on the tablets; it is the ordinary shape of a voluntary digital service, and the only reason it is visible here is that someone surveyed the people who had one and did not open it.
Sources
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2016. 3 of 5 sources carry a publication date, from 21 February 2019 to April 2024.
When the sources were published
- Bloomberg Cities (Bloomberg Philanthropies) · ngoIn Barcelona, an app with a personal touch keeps seniors connected — Bloomberg Cities (trade)
- Ajuntament de Barcelona · city governmentVincles BCN supports and connects over three thousand elderly people — Ajuntament de Barcelona (authority)
- Springer · researchDigital Social Connectedness as a Lifeline for Older People: Use and Non-use of VinclesBCN During the Pandemic — Int'l J. of Disaster Risk Science (research)
What happened to this record
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 5 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 5 addressable claims, 5 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 5
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-0836e27c9fe6ac48
quantitative
Barcelona's Social Rights department lends tablets and a companion app to residents over 65 who feel isolated, connecting them with family, friends and facilitator-led neighbourhood and interest groups via video calls, photos and messages
Sources carrying this claim
clm-8f4e31c6d75ce686
quantitative
The project won the first European Bloomberg Mayors Challenge in autumn 2014, ran a pilot in five neighbourhoods from November 2016 to June 2017, passed a thousand active users citywide in December 2018 and reached 3,067 users and 198 groups by December 2021
Sources carrying this claim
clm-3f93863fba21dca6
descriptive
found the service became a lifeline during the pandemic, with entertainment as much as social support carrying it
Sources carrying this claim
clm-f62a135975b84f9b
descriptive
non-use was strongly associated with being a woman, having a low educational level, having pre-existing social relationships, less time enrolled and a high perceived loneliness
Sources carrying this claim
clm-d0f2e61807c2088a
descriptive
A service designed against loneliness was used least by those who reported feeling loneliest — and by women and by people with less education
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:a142b217a767008abd3d73af1b648c2a1ebdd58227a5bedd57577a23d4bc3576
- 5
- of 5 claims mapped
- 5
- source dossiers
- 2
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Ajuntament de Barcelona — Social Rights Department
- Actor types
- city-government
- Funding model
- mixed
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
5 source dossiers
¿Qué es VinclesBCN? — Ajuntament de Barcelona (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-d16b246f79f578f9- Publisher
- Name not classified · ajuntament.barcelona.cat
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Official service description, target group, personal/group network model
- Claims linked
Evolución del servicio — Ajuntament de Barcelona (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-cdbea9ffdc8a7db5- Publisher
- Name not classified · ajuntament.barcelona.cat
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Official timeline: pilot Nov 2016, citywide rollout March 2018, growth milestones, links to 2021-2025 annual reports
- Claims linked
Vincles BCN supports and connects over three thousand elderly people — Ajuntament de Barcelona (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-d71953229cc3de88- Publisher
- Name not classified · ajuntament.barcelona.cat
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2022-08-07
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
3,067 users at 5-year mark (published 07/08/2022), demographic breakdown
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
In Barcelona, an app with a personal touch keeps seniors connected — Bloomberg Cities (trade)
- Stable source ID
src-3b5428cfb97ec11e- Publisher
- Name not classified · bloombergcities.medium.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2019-02-21
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Independent account of facilitator model, 2014 Mayors Challenge funding, qualitative survey findings
- Claims linked
Digital Social Connectedness as a Lifeline for Older People: Use and Non-use of VinclesBCN During the Pandemic — Int'l J. of Disaster Risk Science (research)
- Stable source ID
src-435f101bb1d60d13- Publisher
- Name not classified · link.springer.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Peer-reviewed evaluation, n=255 users + 12 user/6 professional interviews
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “VinclesBCN — Tablets Against Unwanted Loneliness” — Barcelona, Spain. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/barcelona-vinclesbcn/ (last verified 2026-07-18). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.