There’s a shift happening in our collective consciousness, whether you’ve felt it or not. Influencers scrutinize over-consumption; people are pulling out their “dumb phones” and deactivating their social media.

People are starting to realize that the reality shown by algorithms isn’t necessarily representative but rather curated to our patterns and behaviors in past interactions on the platform, keeping us longer in front of the ads that make them money.

As users find social media increasingly nauseating, social media platforms are now faced with the Darwinian choice: evolve for sustainability or die.

Social media has kept us in an uncomfortable haze for so long. We’ve always known that it wasn't good for us. Still, as for any other drug, we don’t consider quitting until the consequences of our consumption become evident in our lives. The discomfort of quitting will be less painful than allowing your potential, time, and motivation to slip away.

In a broader context, it doesn’t seem odd that our generation has been targeted so violently with mind-numbing social media. In the past, drugs and alcohol were not enough to stifle revolutions. But today, while youth lies at home rotting on digital opium, alarming changes occur around us, and not enough of us are out there preventing it from happening.

We live in odd times. Somehow, the history we learned in eighth grade, asking ourselves appalled ‘how we could ever have let it happen?’ is repeating itself under our noses. Historically, revolutionists have mainly been comprised of youth. The demographic is now found inside the house, broke, depressed, and addicted to instant gratification.

How we change

In 2025, I predict it becomes trendy to disconnect. People will increasingly get sick of brainrot and ditch AI-friendships for real human connection. We re-energise and reconnect with our spirit. I suspect that the wave of neo-analogueists will find their inner purpose in connecting with others and aiding them in finding their way out into the real world.

We will get the ick of alternate reality and Zuckerberg’s metaverse will flop massively. This might lead to it being forced down our throats anyway with business deals integrating metaverses to unavoidable tasks, like grocery shopping or seeing the doctor. Neo-analogueists will protest and use their cultivated creativity to bypass these traps.

Moreover, some will move away from performative story-reposting activism toward restoring democracy in North America and Europe. Some will use their entrepreneurial spirit to solve sustainability issues. Marginalized individuals will use their voices, and the sensitized masses will answer with a newfound tolerance and love for their neighbor.

I see a future where we all collectively snap out of it. We take the political power away from the populists and back into our hands. We will switch coal for cheap renewable hydro-energy for data centers. Someone will innovate a technique for accelerating the renewal of clean water sources. Perhaps, AI, on our side, will aid us in doing that.

In Iceland, we have a saying: “The /need/ teaches a naked woman to spin [process of turning wool into yarn for knitting].” It means that usually, only at the point in time when it becomes critical for something to get done, we do it. This is the state of the humanity now. We are naked and freezing, with the wool in front of us.

I don’t think the fate of humanity will be sold to buy stocks. If Newton’s law about every action having an equally strong reaction is still valid, then the oppressive forces of the world today are way overdue for a large-scale retaliation. This is the moment in history we’ve been waiting for. This is the perfect time to make a change. Any longer and the window for the optimistic future will close. What will you do with this knowledge?