XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

213

Ageing and the Digital: Key Themes, Future Agendas

RC11 Sociology of Aging (host committee)

Language: English

Digital devices, information technologies and mediated systems of communication increasingly shape the social worlds of people in mid to later life.  Digital technologies permeate everyday life and have become interwoven with our identities, narratives, social relationships, social networks, lifestyles and societies.  While tired stereotypes of older people as uninterested or unskilled users of digital technologies have waned, concerns over a digital divide remain, and there is still limited research into the ways in which people in mid to later life incorporate digital technologies and communications into their daily lives and their own meanings, embodiment and experiences of the digital as they grow older. This session is therefore a timely opportunity to review the study of ageing and the digital and to critically explore future challenges and possibilities. For this session, we invite theoretical, methodological and empirical submissions that address the broad area of the digital, ageing and everyday life.  We are particularly interested in papers which critically explore the opportunities and possibilities that people in mid to later life have to engage with and resist digital technologies in everyday life; how narratives surrounding engagement (or not) with digital technologies both challenge and reinforce ideas about ageing (and youth) in complex and, at times, contradictory ways; and the diversity of experiences and meanings surrounding digital and  communication technologies  amongst people as they grow older.