Editorial Ageing with digital technologies: from theory to agency and practice

The title of this special issue, ‘Ageing with digital technologies’ points to two of the growing challenges facing the twenty first century. Namely, the changing demographic structure of societies connected to ageing populations on the one hand, and technological development and digitalization of societies, on the other. These challenges are continuously addressed by researchers and scholars across the globe in a variety of academic disciplines, including medicine, demography, biotechnology, neuroscience to name just a few. At the same time, questions of ageing and technology do not go unnoticed in other disciplines, including humanities and social sciences. The focus of this special issue is on the latter, namely exploring and better understanding the social and material factors, in terms of theory, agency and practice, that play a role when older people are co-creators, users and recipients of technological innovations.