How smartphones are shifting the daily lives of older adults post-retirement in Kyoto and Kochi Prefecture, Japan.

Ageing with Smartphones in Japan examines sixteen months of ethnographic research following older adults, age fifty and up, in urban Kyoto and rural Kochi Prefecture, Japan as they navigate social and personal shifts post-retirement in the age of the smartphone. It attempts to answer what this transition means for friendship, gendered labor, multigenerational living, internal migration, health, as well as life purpose for older adults. This book closely investigates how the smartphone challenges gender-based norms and how older adults creatively navigate them. Using comics, drawings, and fieldwork sketches it also explores how they use digital visual communication to socialize with friends and family.

Uncovers the diverse and unexpected ways aging populations engage with technology.

As digital technologies further embed themselves in everyday life, how do older adults navigate and adapt to these tools? Digital Repertoires introduces the concept of the “digital repertoire” to investigate the evolving ways older people engage with technology across cultural and social contexts. Based on global research, this work confronts typical stereotypes of aging and digital exclusion and emphasizes the agency, creativity, and new challenges older adults experience in their digital interactions.

Including voices of scholars from anthropology, sociology, gerontology, communication studies, and design, this book offers theoretical depth as well as empirical breadth, making it essential reading for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working at the intersection of aging and technology.