AI, Digital Life and the Future of Human Connection

• Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and algorithmically mediated forms of interaction are rapidly reshaping social life, transforming how individuals communicate, learn, work, form identities, and experience relationships. While technological developments have created new opportunities for connectivity and innovation, they have also intensified concerns relating to surveillance, social isolation, misinformation, inequality, emotional alienation, digital dependency, and the erosion of meaningful human engagement. In periods of global turbulence, these shifts raise urgent sociological questions about power, ethics, identity, care, and the future of social connection. This session invites critical and intervention-oriented contributions that examine the implications of AI and digital life through a clinical sociological lens. Papers may explore how emerging technologies shape interpersonal relationships, institutional practices, mental wellbeing, education, labour, governance, and community formation. The session is particularly interested in the ways digital systems both reproduce and challenge existing inequalities across race, class, gender, geography, disability, and access to resources. Contributors are encouraged to engage with questions surrounding digital intimacy, online identity construction, algorithmic control, AI in education and healthcare, cyberbullying, virtual communities, digital trauma, and the psychosocial consequences of technologically mediated living. The session also welcomes discussions on ethical intervention, digital citizenship, relational repair, and community resilience within increasingly technologised societies. Particular emphasis is placed on Global South experiences and the development of socially responsive, human-centred approaches to navigating technological transformation in turbulent times.