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AbstractThe social effects of Internet use have been a major concern for social scientists and society alike. How the Internet affects social capital has been a hot topic in sociology and other social sciences: Is the Internet reinforcing and complementing social capital? Or is it isolating people and diminishing their social capital? Social capital is here defined as the resources that are embedded in one's social ties. This article reviews the literature on the subject, looking at three perspectives: one that suggests no relationship between the Internet and social capital, a second that suggests a negative relationship between the Internet and social capital, and a third that suggests a positive relationship between the Internet and social capital. I conclude by showing that despite the prominent dystopian view of the Internet in the public and in some academic discourse (and the moral panic associated with it), research supports a positive relationship between Internet use and social capital. In addition, I discuss new trends and directions for future research.

This book brings together Sociologists, Computer Scientists, Applied Scientists and Engineers to explore the design, implementation and evaluation of emerging technologies for older people. It offers an innovative and comprehensive overview, not only of the rapidly developing suite of current digital technologies and platforms, but also of perennial theoretical, methodological and ethical issues. As such, it offers support for researchers and professionals who are seeking to understand and/or promote technology use among older adults. The contributions presented here offer theoretical and methodological frameworks for understanding age-based digital inequalities, participation, digital design and socio-gerontechnology. They include ethical and practical reflections on the design and evaluation of emerging technologies for older people, as well as guidelines for ethical, participatory, professional and cross-disciplinary research and practice. In addition, they feature state-of-the-art, international empirical research on communication technologies, games, assistive technology and social media. As the first truly multidisciplinary book on technology use among ageing demographics, and intended for students, researchers, applied researchers, practitioners and professionals in a variety of fields, it will provide these readers with insights, guidelines and paradigms for practice that transcend specific technologies, and lay the groundwork for future research and new directions in innovation.--

Taking a life course and generational perspective, this collection examines topics such as work-life balance, transnational families, digital storytelling and mobile parenting. It offers tools that allow for an informed and critical understanding of ICTs and family dynamics.

"Are Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) connecting families? And what does this mean in terms of family routines, relationships, norms, work, intimacy and privacy? This edited collectiont akes a life course and generational perspective covering theory, including posthumanism and strong structuration theory, and methodology, including digital and cross-disciplinary methods. It presents a series of case studies on topics such as intergenerational connections, work-life balance, transnational families, digital storytelling and mobile parenting. It will give studients, researchers and practitioners a variety of tools to make sense of how ICTs are used, appropriated and domesticated in family life. These tools allow for an informed and critical understanding ICTs and family dynamics"--Back cover image

Loneliness, and its stigmatising nature, has long been of interest to sociology, with germinal contributions by writers such as Robert Weiss. Yet, the social stigma of loneliness remains under-theorised. Furthermore, recent scholarship on loneliness is dominated by psychological perspectives that often overlook the social role of stigma and its entanglement with factors like age-related norms and contexts. To address these gaps, we develop a conceptual understanding of the stigma of loneliness in later life. We focus on older people (65+) since loneliness is strongly linked with assumed age-related decline – illness, 'uselessness' and increasing isolation – which research suggests is more likely to be internalised in later life. In developing our conceptual lens, we creatively combine Erving Goffman and Imogen Tyler's work on stigma. Such reconfiguration integrates relationality and power within micro and macro approaches, pushing forward sociological boundaries on stigma. It also foregrounds the connections between agentic and structural elements of stigma, which have been missing in loneliness studies. Through this lens, we derive key dimensions of the stigma of loneliness: enaction, reception and management. To apply our framework, we draw on interviews, diaries and ethnographic data capturing persistent loneliness among older people living alone and in care homes. Findings illuminate the complexity of loneliness stigma in later life contexts, offering new research and policy directions.

Despite increasing social pressure to use new digital technologies, older people's adoption of them remains below other age groups. This article contributes a sociological dimension to exploring what facilitates learning and using digital technology in later life. We focus on the understudied group of older people who are frail, living in care homes and most likely to be digitally excluded or restricted. Drawing on data from a longitudinal mixed methods study of a co-designed communication app for older people, we explore how attempts to bridge the 'digital divide' unfold in time. Using the concept of affordances, we show how adoption of a new communication technology is shaped by its design, learning contexts and surrounding social actors. With this work we contribute to novel sociological understandings of technology adoption that are critical for digital inequality research.

This article examines how practices of family photography are being transformed in the digital sphere, specifically on Instagram. While research on 'digital intimacies' focusses on romantic or peer interactions, the digital practices of families – especially intergenerational interactions – remain understudied. We use Janet Finch's notion of 'family display' to consider how Instagram affords new modes of performing and sharing family life. This concept has exciting potential for media-rich online spaces, but so far, only a few studies examine how social media platforms extend the display of family practices. To explore family photography on Instagram, we analyse a sample of 200 Instagram posts. We argue that features specific to photo-sharing in digital spaces, such as hashtags, emojis and captions, open up new aspects of and audiences for family display. Our analysis paves the way for future research about how relationships are displayed across a range of digital platforms.

Most developed countries are in the midst of two significant societal trends: the first is an aging population; the second is the uptake of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by large segments of society. But research shows a strong association between age and the so-called digital divide: older adults are less likely to use ICT when compared to other age groups. If we consider the social affordances of the Internet and the online migration of several public and private services, the lack of access or of digital literacy might be increasing age-related inequality. Consequently, we studied adoption, usage, and non-usage of ICT (mobile phones, computers, and the Internet) by Portuguese older adults. For that, we surveyed a random stratified sample of 500 individuals over 64 years of age living in Lisbon. Of this sample, 77% owned a mobile phone, 13% used computers, and 10% used the Internet. The main reasons for non-usage were functional and attitudinal, rather than physical or associated with age. But usage of mobile phones and computers was predicted by age and education, whereas the usage of the Internet was only predicted by education. We followed up the survey with 10 qualitative interviews, using a mixed methods strategy. The qualitative data showed a general positive perception of ICT as well as the importance of family and intergenerational relationships for technology adoption and use.

This article engages Göran Therborn's conceptualisation of existential inequality to explore lived experiences of loneliness in later life. Existential inequality refers to unequal social distribution of personhood, from dignity to autonomy. We argue sociological approaches, like inequality frameworks, are critical to grasp the social nature of loneliness – often missing in related literature. Investigating how people perceive and respond to their loneliness provides a comprehensive understanding of the links between personal/agentic and social/structural dimensions. We apply the idea of existential inequality to two case studies with older people (aged 65+) reporting prolonged loneliness: one encompassing ethnographic data and interviews with care home residents, and a second focusing on diaries produced by older people living alone. Employing existential inequality to frame how older people define, experience and manage loneliness highlights an assemblage of stigmas and marginalisation.

This article examines young people's narratives of rejection of social networking sites (SNSs). It draws upon data of 30 semi-structured interviews with young people aged 18–26 from Portugal. The findings show that reasons for rejecting SNSs are related to three main categories: perceived usefulness of SNSs; specific social practices in SNSs (e.g., disclosure of personal data and gossip); and self-presentation and identity. In addition, our data point to four types of non-users: resisters, rejecters, surrogate users, and potential converts. This typology challenges dichotomies, such as, usage versus non-usage, access versus non-access, and consumption versus non-consumption. Finally, we explore feelings of missing out and social strategies set in place by non-users to cope with the pervasive use of SNSs among young people. We contribute, therefore, to the limited literature on rejection of social media amongst this group, by giving voice to young non-users and their choices.