| MORE HELPED THAN HARMED | Connection | Digital life links people to people, knowledge, education and entertainment anywhere globally at any time in an affordable, nearly frictionless manner. |
| Commerce, government and society | Digital life revolutionizes civic, business, consumer and personal logistics, opening up a world of opportunity and options. | |
| Crucial intelligence | Digital life is essential to tapping into an ever-widening array of health, safety, and science resources, tools and services in real time. | |
| Contentment | Digital life empowers people to improve, advance or reinvent their lives, allowing them to self-actualize, meet soul mates and make a difference in the world. | |
| Continuation toward quality | Emerging tools will continue to expand the quality and focus of digital life; the big-picture results will continue to be a plus overall for humanity. | |
| MORE HARMED THAN HELPED | Digital deficits | People’s cognitive capabilities will be challenged in multiple ways, including their capacity for analytical thinking, memory, focus, creativity, reflection and mental resilience. |
| Digital addiction | Internet businesses are organized around dopamine-dosing tools designed to hook the public. | |
| Digital distrust/divisiveness | Personal agency will be reduced and emotions such as shock, fear, indignation and outrage will be further weaponized online, driving divisions and doubts. | |
| Digital duress | Information overload + declines in trust and face-to-face skills + poor interface design = rises in stress, anxiety, depression, inactivity and sleeplessness. | |
| Digital dangers | The structure of the internet and pace of digital change invite ever-evolving threats to human interaction, security, democracy, jobs, privacy and more. | |
| POTENTIAL REMEDIES | Reimagine systems | Societies can revise both tech arrangements and the structure of human institutions – including their composition, design, goals and processes. |
| Reinvent tech | Things can change by reconfiguring hardware and software to improve their human-centered performance and by exploiting tools like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). | |
| Regulate | Governments and/or industries should create reforms through agreement on standards, guidelines, codes of conduct, and passage of laws and rules. | |
| Redesign media literacy | Formally educate people of all ages about the impacts of digital life on well-being and the way tech systems function, as well as encourage appropriate, healthy uses. | |
| Recalibrate expectations | Human-technology coevolution comes at a price; digital life in the 2000s is no different. People must gradually evolve and adjust to these changes. | |
| Fated to fail | A share of respondents say all this may help somewhat, but – mostly due to human nature – it is unlikely that these responses will be effective enough. |
- Report
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Themes about the future of well-being and digital life
| Continuation toward quality | Emerging tools will continue to expand the quality and focus of digital life; the big-picture results will continue to be a plus overall for humanity. | |
| Digital dangers | The structure of the internet and pace of digital change invite ever-evolving threats to human interaction, security, democracy, jobs, privacy and more. |
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