In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
UCLA scientists have predicted a social trend for the next decade: the ‘roaring 20s,’ akin to the decade of extravagance that happened a century ago after the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. The hardship of 2020, they say, will catapult society into a period of excess, bolstered by an anticipated economic upturn.
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Keeping the positivity going, even astrologers have predicted that 2021 will be a time for “healing, mending, and progress.” The new year is going to be as eventful as 2020, but for reasons decidedly more positive and fulfilling. Cheers to that.
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Coming to the concept of work, which was completely upended in 2020: experts predict 2021 will bring more of the same — remote work will continue, hatred of Zoom will increase, more people will be laid off as industries recover from 2020’s economic downturn, and hence more people will explore new careers. The shift in worklife caused by the pandemic may never reverse.
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Coming to health care, which became the focal point of conversation in 2020: the year of the pandemic highlighted globally several shortcomings of health care infrastructure, and experts predict 2021 will bring a boom of start-ups attempting to fix them. The health care industry, they say, is about to explode.
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This also means a shift in how patients interact with doctors. The Covid19 pandemic taught us how to seek health care remotely, increasing literacy about telemedicine around the world. Moving forward, it’s possible we will continue to minimize hospital visits and instead seek more health care options digitally.
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One of the biggest technology predictions for the everyday consumer in 2021 is that they are going to become even more obsessed with the idea of a smart home. The year of home isolation in the pandemic, experts say, has made us rethink what our homes are and what they do for us. In 2021, we upgrade.
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And if we’re all going to consume more in 2021, it begs the question — how will companies convince us to buy their product? 2021 predictions for the future of branding signal a shift in marketing, which experts say will double down on messages around the empathy, family values, and care that people were forced to embody in 2020.
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Despite all of these forecasts, however, 2020 was an unprecedented year that defied the predictions that came before it. One example is poverty, which worsened in the Covid19 pandemic in a way that experts couldn’t account for. In order to get back on track, solutions to lift people out of poverty will have to look markedly different than any before. To a certain extent — we’re starting over.
