In 1998, Americans predicted what life in 2025 would look like. Here's how they scored overall.
75 percent of people accurately predicted a transformative moment in American history.
In 1998, Americans predicted life 27 years into the future.
If someone asked you to predict the broad strokes of life 27 years into the future, what would your batting average be? That was the task back in 1998, when USA Today/Gallup asked Americans to envision what we would (and wouldn't) have accomplished by 2025.
As CNN notes, citing archived polling maintained by Cornell University's Roper Center, it's fascinating to explore what people got right and wrong. The categories run the full gamut, from scientific developments (a cure for cancer) to everyday activities (online shopping) to existential topics (like the existence of alien life).
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How did people picture life in 2025?
So what did people get right about 2025? For one, they were mostly appropriately cautious with the more grandiose categories: 69 percent of respondents correctly guessed that space travel would not be normal for "ordinary Americans," and 60 percent answered that the cloning of humans would not be "commonplace." (That said, even the inverse is fascinating: 37 percent thought that the latter would be common.) Meanwhile, 68 percent predicted that humans wouldn't have "made or received contact with alien-life forms."
Looking at more terrestrial matters, 74 percent of people predicted that gay marriages would be commonplace; 69 percent said that the U.S. would have elected a Black president; and 75 percent thought a "deadly new disease" would emerge.
It's also intriguing to note what people got wrong—even when people were thinking in the right direction. While 56 percent thought most stores would be "replaced" by internet shopping, Sellers Commerce projected that only 21 percent of retail purchases in 2025 would take place online. (They expected that number to reach 22.6 percent by 2027.)
In another glimpse into online life, 52 percent of respondents thought most people would work remotely. (That figure is still currently a bit ambitious, at least for Americans.) Elsewhere, 66 percent predicted the country would have elected a woman president, and 59 percent thought cancer would be cured.
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"We were so hopeful"
After CNN's report made the rounds online, lots of people chimed in to reflect on these predictions—often marveling at the general optimism they seemed to reflect. Here are some notable comments from the r/Xennials and r/Charts subreddits:
"Really interesting. The social ones we largely met, but but a lot of the scientific ones."
"It’s amazing how much less we thought about the tech things (internet shopping, WFH) than things that like curing cancer or commonplace assisted suicide."
"We were so hopeful. Things were just going to get better, right?"
"We were supposed to have flying cars by now"
"We were so optimistic back then."
"They actually got a surprisingly high percentage of these right. Futurology is notoriously difficult to do well."
It's always interesting to examine people's predictions for the future, even when those people aren't adults. Back in 2020, the BBC shared a video compilation of kids in 1966 guessing what the year 2000 might look like. While some of the visions were fairly dark, others touched on lighter, breezier topics like robots and, yes, cabbage pills.
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