Phone Addiction is Gross!The most significant prediction for 2025 is that perceptions about social media and phone addiction will shift dramatically. I've written about social media a lot on this blog (just search "
social media" in the search bar above), and while I think everyone knows that it's
NOT GOOD for anyone, I think this is the year we start to see some real action taken.
What does that look like?
🚫 We will see phones banned in more places – schools, restaurants, and events.
🚫 More people cutting the cord from social media platforms.
But most importantly, I think we will see public perception shift dramatically in 2025, and phone addiction will begin to be viewed as a serious health risk (
BRAIN ROT is real!). With that, we will see society begin to associate phone addiction with an unhealthy lifestyle. This stigmatization of phone addiction is similar to how fast food became labeled as unhealthy and undesirable (even embarrassing/gross). Phone addiction and the impacts of social media are going to be viewed through a very different lens in the next few years – I think we see this really start to gain momentum in 2025.
Woke is Over!It feels like the entire woke experiment has been a complete failure.
MOST of the country is ready to move on.
We look at cities like Portland and San Francisco as examples of what we DON'T want the rest of our cities to become – decriminalizing shoplifting, defunding the police, open drug use... THAT SHIT DIDN'T WORK. It turns out people want to be able to walk around a city without being afraid of getting attacked by a mentally ill, drug-abusing zombie! Weird!
Woke is way out in 2025.
I think this will also translate to marketing – these woke brands and companies jamming woke ideology down the throats of consumers will stop.
The whole cancel culture mentality is also OUT.
AI and the Analog Renaissance!
C-suites and boards are all in a race to show they are using AI and saving money, reducing headcount, and becoming more efficient.
The challenge is that most teams don't know how to actually leverage AI (at least at scale) and the output is usually shit.
In a lot of ways, AI has just made creating content faster and cheaper – but the content itself is BAD. The result has been this flood of AI slop, and I think people are getting tired of all the truly terrible content. This will result in more brands turning to offline channels –
I wrote about this prediction a bit last year.
So what happens next?
We see the smart brands begin focusing on outside-of-the-home activations – IRL experiences to generate brand awareness and build community. I think we will see a lot more brick-and-mortar stores, pop-ups, and in-person engagement. We're going to see the smart brands focus on deploying non-digital strategies – more analog than AI – this will help stand out from all the digital noise.
Mainstream Goes NUCLEAR!I've
written a lot about nuclear energy over the past year. I think in 2025, we will start hearing A LOT more about nuclear energy and, specifically, small modular reactors. I am betting big on
NuScale Power.
Invite Only NewslettersI think we see a lot more
invite only newsletters – similar to
Opulent Tips. Eventually, there will be a natural reaction to substack saturation, and blogs and offline/printed zines will come back into the media discussion. I'm not sure that is this year, but it will happen eventually (and then don.earth will be perfectly positioned to capitalize on the obscure blog trend!).
