Life Under AI: Governing the Ageing and the Young

The co-constitution of age and digital technology is reshaping what it means to grow old and to be young in the twenty-first century. This session treats digital society as generationally constituted, not as a neutral backdrop to ageing and youth. Digital carves and weaves distinct temporalities and vulnerabilities, while different cohorts manage creativity and resistance to the technological enveloping of profoundly unequal spaces and places.

AI has infused the intergenerational field with a qualitatively new dynamic. For older adults, AI-driven systems—in health, housing, credit, care, and even employment—hold the promise of improved well-being and longevity. At the same time, the promotion of dignified ageing exacts unexpected new burdens, from the datafication of the body to lessened autonomy and heightened loneliness among AI agents and robots. AI ageism, embedded in training data and algorithmic decision-making, has emerged as a structural dimension of digital inequality.

For younger generations, AI mediates identity formation, education, labour precarity, and political engagement in ways stratified by class, race, gender, and Global North/South location. This session invites scholars to examine, comparatively and transnationally, generational digital configurations, the grey or silver digital divide, and intergenerational learning. Can AI restructure relations and the conditions under which dignified living can flourish throughout the life course, rather than deepening exclusion? This is the question of primary interest. Researchers and practitioners from East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia, where demographic change is sharpest, are especially encouraged to submit.

Session Organizers:

Prof. Jelica STEFANOVIC STAMBUK, University of Belgrade Faculty of Political Sciences, Serbia, vzorin@gmail.com
Pilar RODRIGUEZ MARTINEZ, University of Almeria, Spain, pilarr@ual.es
Nuria RODRIGUEZ AVILA, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, nrodriguez@ub.edu

See more of: WG10 Digital Sociology
See more of: RC11 Sociology of Aging
See more of: RC06 Family Research
See more of: RC34 Sociology of Youth
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