"Don't let the mulberry trees bloom at night, the sky will be full of clouds." On the occasion of the Double Ninth Festival, elderly care has once again become a topic of concern to all sectors of society. With the development of science and technology, the traditional respect and care for the elderly are also iterating into new forms. In recent years, ByteDance Charity has actively fulfilled its social responsibilities, given full play to its technological advantages, and brought new technological solutions to "old and difficult" problems such as lost elderly people, mobility difficulties, dining difficulties, and the digital divide.
With the acceleration of social mobility and the deepening of aging, people get lost from time to time, and every missing incident may be related to the survival of a life and the fate of a family. To make matters worse, due to various reasons such as Alzheimer's disease, the elderly are at a higher risk of getting lost. Once lost, they are prone to accidents such as bumps, frostbite, car accidents, and sudden illnesses. Therefore, in many cases, for the lost elderly, "time is life" is not an exaggerated rhetoric. However, in the past, tracing people mainly relied on traditional media and interpersonal networks. They could only "cast a wide net" by publishing newspapers or posting missing person notices. Information dissemination was limited by physical space and crowd coverage, and the efficiency was low. The "golden search period" was often missed.
With the development of the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, social networks have developed rapidly, and the efficiency of information dissemination has increased exponentially. Relying on the power of technology to help the lost elderly return home seems to be a natural thing. But new pain points emerged one after another. First of all, accurate push of information for finding the elderly must rely on powerful information distribution technology, which requires a certain user base and technical capabilities. Secondly, improving the efficiency of searching people must rely on the participation of multiple parties, which means that Internet companies need to take the initiative to break information barriers, coordinate with civil affairs departments, media, volunteer organizations and other forces to achieve data interaction. However, all this is actually unprofitable, and ordinary Internet companies have difficulty in promoting it.
In this regard, ByteDance, which owns Toutiao, Douyin and other products, realizes that the innovation of any product or service is inseparable from social participation. As a platform that directly faces the society, it should start from the perspective of safeguarding social interests, aim to promote social progress, and use technology to convey goodwill.
ByteDance’s investment in tracing people began when an elderly man went missing. On the second day of the Lunar New Year in 2016, an employee of Toutiao who was responsible for news push saw a missing person notice and used precise pop-up technology to push the missing person notice to users near the incident site. Within a few hours, thanks to the help of netizens, an 82-year-old missing man suffering from Alzheimer's disease returned home. Inspired by this, Toutiao launched Toutiao Person Search, and then continued to work on public welfare projects, constantly expanding the boundaries of technological person tracing, and the object of person tracing expanded from the initial search for lost people to a broad sense of tracing people and relatives. In 2022, as the main position expanded from Toutiao to Douyin, Toutiao People Searching was renamed Douyin People Searching. Over the past ten years, Douyin has posted a total of 229,000 missing person notices, connected 26,000 volunteers, and recovered 25,700 people, including 8,939 elderly people.
In December 2025, relying on Douyin’s technical capabilities for tracing people, Douyin added an “Elders Lost Prevention Mode” under the “Elders Mode”. When the system recognizes that the user has left the set safety range, it will notify emergency contacts through Douyin pop-ups and other methods. If the contact confirms that a family member is missing, they can initiate a search on Douyin with one click. From finding people after being lost to preventing them from getting lost, Douyin People Finder uses its technical capabilities to move the frontier forward, trying to prevent more misfortunes from happening.
In addition to responding to accidental incidents of missing people, ByteDance Charity also sees the long-term plight of the elderly. "Being alone when you go out, and being accompanied by a light when you come home" is the normal life of many left-behind elderly people. The children of these elderly people are not around, they often mess around when eating, they lack social interaction on weekdays, and they cannot keep up with the digital age. Not only are they inconvenient in life, but they are also easy targets for fraud.
In 2021, the ByteDance Charity Foundation teamed up with the China Social Welfare Foundation and the Beijing Xinmin Social Organization Capacity Building Promotion Center to jointly launch the "Ginkgo Home" project, which not only provides meal assistance services for the elderly, but also attracts them to get out of their homes, go to the community, and meet other elderly people. So far, the project has built 47 meal service stations in 13 provinces across the country, serving more than 1.45 million elderly people in total. It has carried out nearly 7,000 community activities such as anti-fraud and informatization science popularization, with more than 200,000 participants.
Relying on the technical advantages, traffic advantages and information dissemination advantages of the Douyin platform, each site of "Ginkgo Home" has registered a Douyin account and regularly broadcasts the meal service process so that children can see the real-time status of their parents when they turn on their mobile phones, while also accepting public supervision. Douyin experts will also be invited to the site to visit and live broadcast, recording the real plight of rural elderly people, allowing netizens to see the real scenes of the elderly people receiving help at the site. These measures have also enhanced the project's exposure on the ByteDance public welfare platform, attracting more people to join in helping the elderly, and bringing new fundraising to the project. It can be said that the technical power of the platform has improved the transparency of public welfare and enhanced the hematopoietic function of public welfare projects.
In September 2026, the project was upgraded to Ginkgo Home 2.0, and the "Smart Community" system was launched. Through images, videos, audio and other information, dining registration, service data records, statistical reports and operating status synchronization are automatically completed, reducing repeated entry by front-line personnel and item-by-item verification by the project team, targetedly solving the human resource shortage problem in inclusive elderly care services, and exploring a warm, transparent, and efficient sustainable digital technology to help the elderly.
At present, the development of artificial intelligence technology is in full swing. Digital intelligence empowerment not only brings unlimited possibilities to the development of human society, but also provides unprecedented new ideas for protecting the "sunset red". Take "stroke", a common geriatric disease, as an example. There are more than 26 million stroke patients in my country, and about 75% of them will leave varying degrees of neurological damage. Among them, 70 to 80% of the elderly will suffer from walking balance disorders. For them, "walking" has become something that needs to be relearned. At the same time, the adaptation rate of rehabilitation equipment in primary hospitals is less than 40%, and the national shortage of professional rehabilitation practitioners exceeds 100,000.
ByteDance’s public welfare platform’s Douyin Care for the Elderly initiative focuses on the recovery plight of elderly people who have suffered strokes. In June 2026, Bytedance Charity teamed up with Volcano Engine and Zhongke Ruiyi to jointly develop a "Photosynthetic Step" applet. It uses artificial intelligence technology to awaken the walking rhythm of stroke patients lost due to the disease with the rhythm of AI music. Users tie a pair of lightweight wearable devices to their feet and follow the rhythm of music generated on their mobile phones. The system will record data such as cadence, stride length, and walking symmetry in real time. It will continuously analyze the data through large models and continuously adjust the rehabilitation plan, forming a closed loop of "testing while practicing, and adjusting while testing." A 24-hour "rehabilitation therapist" is assigned to these elderly people to help them regain their confidence, dignity, and courage to walk again in their later years.
After the mini program is launched, the project will provide free use opportunities to elderly people in need through the China Aging Development Foundation, covering 13 nursing homes in Beijing, Hebei, and Tianjin, and will serve more than 200 elderly people this year. In addition to stroke rehabilitation, Douyin's elderly care campaign also focuses on cataract screening assistance, hearing impairment screening assistance, aging-friendly transformation and other directions closely related to the health of the elderly. Related public welfare projects are launched on the ByteDance public welfare platform to help the elderly in need "hear clearly, see clearly, live stably, and care for themselves", reduce the risk of disability for the elderly, improve the quality of life of the elderly, reduce the pressure of family care, and protect a dignified and warm old age. So far, more than 5,000 elderly people have benefited.
I am old and people are old. Technology continues to advance, and there are always people who are getting older. Douyin’s people-finding, Ginkgo Home, Douyin’s elderly care activities, and ByteDance Charity have been using actions to build a warmer digital world and imbue innovation with humanistic care. In the future, we look forward to more such platforms actively participating in the elderly care industry, empowering elderly care with technology, and creating a better life for the elderly in their later years. At the same time, we also hope that all sectors of society will pay attention to the construction of an age-friendly society and provide more care and support for the elderly.
