Negotiating Autonomy, Control, and Privacy in Always-On Home IoT Technology-Mediated Care Relationships with Older Adults

Always-on home IoT technologies, such as smart speakers, sensors, and cameras, are increasingly marketed toward older adults aging in place and their support networks for use in care contexts. At the same time, their integration into care relationships surfaces tensions around autonomy, consent, and relational power that existing systems are not well-equipped to address. Through individual and paired interviews with 22 participants (adults aged 65+ and their support network members), we examine how smart home adoption, use, and management become sites of ongoing negotiations. We find that older adults differentiate what they are willing to share based on the recipient, data modality, and degree of retained control, across both platform and family data sharing. They accept awareness mechanisms while desiring authority over automated actions. We show that older adults' preferences are frequently bypassed through structural power asymmetries rooted in device acquisition and management pathways, often rationalized by family members' protective intent. Older adults prefer to actively negotiate boundaries and resist forms of surveillance that undermine their autonomy. From these findings, we emphasize the need for smart home systems that support ongoing, multi-sided negotiations and derive three design criteria for creating care environments that preserve older adults' agency and dignity.