In the late 19th century, before the invention of film and radio, every piece of music, performance, speech (even a natural sight like a rainbow) was a unique event. Unrepeatable. Film and radio changed that, imposing a massive shift in the way we consume popular culture. Several of the world’s dominant media companies were founded at the time by men with an unrelenting sense of wonder about new media. The result was a phenomenal lack of control: they didn’t believe they needed it. This was the future and it was making them rich. Obviously, more was better.
Film and radio would eventually combine into television, creating an even greater detachment from acting at its core, while supplanting human connection with strategic sparks of dopamine. Of course, people were hooked: more excitement and no effort equaled a better future. When streaming to personal devices became ubiquitous, that future fused even greater profitability with the law of diminishing returns: crushed empathy, heightened anxiety, and social inadequacy became central elements of the human experience.
Ultimately, this has resulted in general social unrest, and I believe that 2025 will be the time when some facets of society begin to methodically separate themselves from their screen-based addictions. I predict that the leaders of this change will be the digital natives of Generation Z for whom the simplicity of technology-free exchange will be a novelty similar to their original technological advances.
Generation Z (currently ages 13 to 27) are the people most deeply affected by digital addiction. After all, they were born after the invention of the Internet. Its main methods of understanding the world have been digital from the beginning. Real agency (connection with other human beings) has been largely unavailable for schoolwork, training, and mentoring. Even the informational mundanity of navigating normal life has been relegated to apps: the institutionalized dominance of the screen with all the restrictions and no learned experience to survive them.
Except his instincts. It is the instincts of Generation Z that are beginning to evolve into a dominant force for change in modern society. The cost of things (a huge problem for everyone) largely determines how Generation Z views their priorities. They are selecting user-generated content instead of expensive new media. They seek longer meaning from experiences that are above the short-term gratification of materialism. In a recent US Gallup PollMore than 50 percent of respondents indicated that they do not trust technology companies, the government or the judicial system.
Generation Z is also embracing underconsumptioncentral and disinfluential tendencies, questioning the values brought to them by reverent media and increasing demands for a work-life balance that would have terrified previous generations. All of these are positive for crucial advances for society.
So in 2025, I think the next step will be for Generation Z to embrace the simplicity of human exchange without technology: events unmediated by an ever-corrupting screen. It is the impact of the new, a novelty as elemental as cinema in its beginnings. It’s scary, safe, unpredictable, a real change in the digital life that they/us so dominate. But it’s human and dimensional and full of things we can’t get online. It’s what humans are at our messy core, and for all those reasons I think we’ll see the virtues of screen retraction begin to be celebrated, with Generation Z leading the way.