The World in 50 Years

In social media, companies that serve our deeper human needs will emerge as the most successful and most important. Today, many of these tech companies generate growth by preying on our vulnerabilities in a way that keeps us addicted to their products. I believe we’ll come to this realization as a culture, and gravitate toward those companies that actually help us feel connection, not validation.

I believe it will be the same thing that causes the biggest conflicts today. As Pascal put it more than 400 years ago, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” With constant distraction in our pockets, we seem to be connected to everything and everyone—except ourselves. While screens will likely lose their prominence, distraction never will. I believe this, more than anything else, is what leads to our inability to connect and unwillingness to empathize with others. And this, at the root, is what causes nearly all conflicts.

My hope is that we can engineer ways for people to communicate and connect on a deeper level than many of us are used to via social media updates and small talk. We, as humans, find much deeper meaning and joy when we bond over our dreams, our struggles, and our vulnerabilities—not over our latest vacation or the cool dish we just ordered out at dinner. I believe social media can help us connect over these things when it’s designed around our deeper needs, and not what keeps us glued to our screens.

We’ll be doing it in-person, not through the medium of digital screens. No matter how good screens get, I don’t believe they’ll ever be able to replicate the 3D, multi-sensational experience of actually being together in real life. I believe screens will fade out of existence, though augmented reality will certainly be part of our daily lives.

I believe choosing a partner will become an informed, data-driven decision. That probably sounds unromantic! But the person we decide to spend our lives with is the single most important choice of our life—and virtually all of us make that decision based on a fleeting gut feeling, rather than what *actually* indicates long-term compatibility. That, I believe, is the true potential of dating apps.

We will look back on today with shock at how tethered we were to our phones—the same way we now look back on the prevalence of smoking (only it’s so much worse, because we’re all doing it, almost all the time). I hope we’re all telling stories to our grandchildren about how most of our time was spent staring at screens instead of with one another—and they’re looking at us in disbelief.

Though there has been a trend of increasing screen time since the 1950s, I believe this trend will reverse as we become burned out on the low-fi experience of staring at pixels, and society grows more aware of the health risks of digital addiction. Screens will become a thing of the past as we become disenchanted with our phones and tablets, and we learn to make real life more exciting through connected devices, augmented reality, and biological innovations.