The more things change, the more they stay the same. The future, it turns out, is not all that difficult to predict. All you have to do is think about now and extrapolate a little. You’ll probably get more right than wrong unless you’re really reaching.

Case in point: back in ’98, Gallup and USA Today asked 1,055 Americans to imagine life in 2025. The result of that survey has been released, and people mostly nailed it, with a few laughable exceptions here and there.

Most Americans believed the country would elect a Black president, that same-sex marriage would be legal and common, and that a deadly new disease would emerge. That last one seems hilariously and frighteningly spot on in retrospect. What did 1998 landline-owning adults know that 13-year-old me at the time was blissfully unaware of?

So that’s three spot-on predictions. Here are some more: 1998 people were right to doubt that space travel would become routine for regular citizens, but could they have ever predicted that Katy Perry would find a way to be cringy in space? Good job, Nostradumbasses. Sticking to the space theme, the respondents also believed that we would not make contact with aliens. They were right about that, but that depends on how deep the alien conspiracy YouTube/TikTok rabbit hole you’ve gone down. If you’re one of the many who have taken that particular interstellar trip down social media, you probably think the aliens are wearing human skin suits among us.

As for the stuff that didn’t age well, about two-thirds of respondents assumed the United States would’ve elected a woman president by now. Close, but not quite. More than half expected a cure for cancer. While we were not there yet, mRNA vaccines could get us close to it. Sixty-one percent thought living to 100 would be routine. That is kind of happening, just not at a mass scale. The US centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years, according to a 2024 Pew study, but that’s still not exactly “routine.”

Some other stuff that people from the distant past of 1998 got depressingly right: 70 percent thought that quality of life would improve, but only for the rich. Opinions were split on whether the same would be said for the middle class, and people definitely thought things were going to get worse for the poor.

Some stuff is easy to see even when you’re living in relatively good times. Nearly 80 percent predicted less personal privacy, and a majority expected less freedom overall. Check and check. Most anticipated higher crime. In reality, crime rates have been in a steady freefall for decades, a trend that there’s currently no reason to believe won’t continue.

Respondents also mostly believed that race relations would improve and that medical care would become more available. Not much to say about those other than lol.

The starkest, most telling change between now and then is in the general mood of the era. In 1998, about 60 percent of people said they were satisfied with the direction of the country.

Today, that number sits at 24 percent.

The post People in 1998 Made Frighteningly Accurate Predictions About 2025 appeared first on VICE.

A recent survey reported by StudyFinds suggests the habit is actually pretty common. One in six adults currently in relationships says there is someone in their life they would leave their partner for if that person showed romantic interest. Not a hypothetical stranger. An actual person they already know. The data comes from a Talker Research survey of 1,279 Americans who said they were in committed relationships.

That finding sits alongside another revealing number from the same research. One in five Americans in relationships says they don’t consider their current partner their soulmate. Millennials were the generation most likely to believe in the soulmate concept overall. Wanting a romantic ideal and feeling settled in a real relationship don’t always line up.

There are also notable differences between men and women. Nineteen percent of men said they have someone they would leave their partner for, compared to 12 percent of women. Women, on the other hand, were slightly more likely to say their partner isn’t their soulmate. The survey doesn’t claim these are the same people, but taken together, the numbers suggest many couples are functioning with unanswered questions about commitment.

Clinical psychologist Adam Horvath says that internal tension isn’t unusual. “It is not uncommon to think we could leave our partner for the new, exciting, mysterious other one, but it matters how we respond to these feelings,” he said. “If you often find yourself emotionally invested outside your relationship, that’s a signal to look at why your boundaries are dropping.”

Horvath is careful to separate attraction from behavior. “We’re human. Attraction does not turn off when we say ‘I choose you,’” he said. “What matters is what we do with our feelings, and whether we’re honest with ourselves about why they’re there.” Having a crush or imagining a different outcome doesn’t mean the relationship is doomed.

The situation becomes more serious when people start comparing their partner to an imagined version of someone else. “When we compare our real partner to a fantasy of someone else, and check out because there’s something better,” Horvath explained, “that often reflects something missing that the other person represents.” He pointed to things like novelty, playfulness, or feeling understood without trying.

Taken together, the survey offers a blunt snapshot of modern commitment. For many people, staying in a relationship is an active decision rather than a lack of alternatives. Whether having a backup person is harmless or a warning sign depends on how honestly someone is willing to look at what that attachment says about their relationship.

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A new survey from Talker Research suggests that feeling is more common than people admit. One in five Americans currently in a relationship says their partner is not their soulmate. The survey included 2,000 adults, with 1,279 respondents saying they were partnered. Eighty percent said their partner is “the one.” Twenty percent said nope.

Part of the tension comes from how loose the word soulmate is. For some, it means destiny and emotional ease. For others, it means trust, shared values, and choosing the same person even when nothing feels cinematic. The survey didn’t ask respondents to define the term, which leaves space for people who feel committed without feeling cosmically certain.

Your ‘Soulmate’ Might Have a Backup Partner

Another finding adds some discomfort. Sixteen percent of people in relationships said there’s someone in their life they would leave their current partner for if that person showed romantic interest. The stat doesn’t imply someone is halfway out the door. It implies people notice temptation and decide what lines not to cross.

Adam Horvath, a clinical psychologist at Personal Psychology, addressed that reality directly. “We’re human. Attraction does not turn off when we say ‘I choose you,’” he told New York Post. Horvath emphasized that noticing feelings for someone else doesn’t automatically mean someone is a bad partner or that their relationship is failing. It means they’re paying attention to their internal world.

Problems surface when attraction becomes an escape route. Horvath explained that comparing a real partner to an imagined version of someone else often highlights something missing. Not necessarily a different person, but a quality that feels absent, like novelty, playfulness, or excitement. In those moments, the fantasy says more about the relationship’s pressure points than about destiny.

The survey also showed small gender differences. Women were slightly more likely to say their partner isn’t their soulmate. Men were more likely to say they’d leave their partner for someone else if the opportunity appeared. Millennials stood out as the group most likely to believe in soulmates at all, which makes sense for a generation raised on rom-coms and curated love stories.

None of this feels like a crisis. It feels like people trying to balance romantic ideals with adult reality, and occasionally admitting the two don’t line up perfectly. 

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The survey, conducted by UK youth charity OnSide, found that 20 percent of English teens turn to chatbots because it’s “easier than talking to a real person.” Overall, the researchers found that about two in five teens have used AI for advice, some emotional support, or just to chat.

Eleven percent say they use chatbots for mental health support, 12 percent for company, and 14 percent for navigating the trials and tribulations of personal relationships with humans. The one silver lining here is that 61 percent of respondents insist that they never ask a chatbot to sort through their personal emotional baggage.

It’s probably not great that chatbots have a long, storied history of ruining people’s brains, and that chatbots (and AI services overall) have thoroughly integrated themselves into the daily life of minors, as social media apps did years ago. They are readily available, have virtually no, if any, restrictions, and parents may have little understanding of their dangers.

Just a few days ago, Stanford Medicine’s Brainstorm Lab for Mental Health Innovation teamed up with child advocacy nonprofit Common Sense Media to release a study that found that all of the major chatbots out there, like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, among others, are “fundamentally unsafe” for teens seeking mental health help.

These bots can’t reliably handle crises, are terrible at nuanced conversations, and cannot grasp the complexities of the full spectrum of human mental health conditions. You know what a really good indicator that these things are not good for teen mental health? Both Google and OpenAI are already fending off lawsuits tied to teen suicides involving chatbot interactions.

Maybe the most frightening part lies in the convenience of it all. If you want to understand why technologies become sticky, it’s because they provide a service people find valuable while being incredibly easy to use and to seamlessly incorporate into their lives. AI chatbots do exactly that. Even if the response it spits out is fundamentally flawed on several levels, people will often accept the semblance of a result, or a mostly correct result, over nothing.

An AI chatbot can respond instantly at 3 AM when everyone else is asleep. It is the ever-ready, ever-present, ever-eager best friend that might convince you that you are a misunderstood demigod whose most insane ideas should be celebrated.

It makes sense why, according to OnSide, 19 percent of respondents say conversations with a chatbot are just easier than those with a human, and why six percent claim they have no one to talk to, and another six percent trust AI more than people.

Our world is breeding legions of teens and children who don’t have a lot of reason, or even the means, to go out and socialize. And why would they? The world is wildly expensive, and these kids have little autonomy. They do not have the means to be independent. So, we have generation on top of generation of indoor kids.

Social skills are eroding at a rapid pace, and here comes an AI chatbot to make a teen think that this hyper agreeable, algorithmically-driven chatter is a good enough facsimile of human interaction, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

AI hasn’t just woven itself into kids’ lives in record time; it’s directly influencing their upbringing.

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Over the past decade, people say they’ve lost around nine friendships. Distance ended half of them. Life transitions came next at 48 percent, followed by one side simply giving up at 40 percent. A quarter said there just isn’t enough time anymore, which feels like the most adult answer possible.

Men are losing friends faster than women, and Gen Z is dropping them the quickest, losing about ten close connections per decade. Psychologists say the problem isn’t that people don’t care. It’s that daily life offers fewer chances to connect.

“Making new friendships in adulthood can be really challenging due to not having as many built-in opportunities in everyday life,” said licensed clinical psychologist Kylie Sligar, co-owner of All in Bloom Therapy. “Additionally, so much of life is virtual these days.”

Friendship has become something you have to schedule, like a doctor’s appointment. Remote work, long commutes, and algorithmic distractions eat the hours that used to belong to other people. Sligar says rebuilding connection takes discomfort and initiative.

“Taking initiative, being consistent, and stepping into vulnerability are all important aspects to making new and lasting connections,” she said.

The study also found that 22 percent of people lost friends when their values stopped aligning, and 35 percent admitted they simply stopped reaching out. The result is a country full of adults who crave deeper relationships but can’t find the energy to maintain them.

Losing nine friends in ten years doesn’t sound catastrophic until you realize your entire circle fits on one hand. Friendships used to form naturally through proximity and shared time. Now they’re something we have to protect from the pace of modern life.

Sligar offered a small dose of comfort: “There are so many other adults out there feeling lonely and looking for friendships. You’re not the only one.”

That’s the good news. The bad news is, someone still has to send the first text.

The post This Is the Average Number of Close Friends—and It’s Kind of Depressing appeared first on VICE.

This particular poll was relatively small, with a total of 2,000 participants all hailing from the U.K., but the results gel with those seen in similar surveys, even ones that are decades old. A 2014 survey by Glamour found 54 percent of women were unhappy with their bodies, a spike from the 40 percent of women who felt the same way when polled by the magazine in 2011. A 1984 study found 41 percent of women expressed body dissatisfaction, results that caused researchers to coin the phrase “normative discontent” to describe the widespread dissatisfaction women experience when it comes to their weight. And although more weight is generally given to the physical appearances of other genders, men aren’t immune from body confidence issues, either. One Psychology Today study from 1997 found a whopping 88 percent of the women and 79 percent of the men polled were dissatisfied with their bodies. These numbers are especially troubling given the strong link between positive body image and overall life satisfaction. It might be tempting to dismiss body anxiety as vain, frivolous, and Instagram-driven, but it’s clear that isn’t the case. More likely, intense and unattainable beauty standards are the driving factor, because even as the medium shifts, the message remains the same: You’re not good enough, because you don’t look like [insert archetypical Hot Person of the Decade here].

So, self-love eludes the masses, as it has for generations. Where else can we turn? One alternative is the body neutrality movement, which frees believers from having to conjure up love for the body, and encourages measured indifference instead—a lofty goal, especially for marginalized people whose bodies society tends to deem even further from the “ideal.” It’s hard to set judgment aside when you feel constantly judged. I guess there’s the possibility of avoiding all mirrors like a vampire, or milling around until being Uploaded To The Cloud becomes a viable option? Or maybe just trying to do things that encourage self-love, besides Googling “how to love yourself” and buying ass-firming scrubs on Instagram. Hey, if I had the definitive answers, please know I’d blog it for you.

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They’re citing a new poll from NPR and PBS News that suggests the dramatic confirmation process for Kavanaugh — who has been publicly accused of sexual assault and misconduct by at least three women — has chipped away at the enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democratic voters. The poll says 82 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans say upcoming elections are “very important.” The same poll, in July, gave Democrats a 10-point lead.

President Donald Trump has been pushing that narrative, tweeting: “The harsh and unfair treatment of Judge Brett Kavanaugh is having an incredible upward impact on voters. The PEOPLE get it far better than the politicians. Most importantly, this great life cannot be ruined by mean & despicable Democrats and totally uncorroborated allegations!”

But is that true? Have Democrats inadvertently helped secure Kavanaugh’s confirmation and assisted Republicans in the upcoming midterms? The reality of the situation is a bit complicated, as it so often is, because both sides of the aisle can make the case that Kavanaugh is rallying their supporters.

The case for Republicans

Republicans have seen a slight boost in recent polls. Two North Dakota polls, for example, show Sen. Heidi Heitkamp — one of the five key senators in the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, who announced Thursday she’s a no — down by almost 11 percent in her race. And a Quinnipiac poll shows Democrats’ general polling lead shrinking. On top of that, more polls show closer-than-previously-thought Senate races in New Jersey and good chances for Republican incumbents in districts of Ohio and Virginia.

The president and other prominent conservatives have voiced excitement over the polling boost.

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, clearly emboldened, called Kavanaugh “one of the most impressive, most stunningly qualified Supreme Court nominees in our nation’s history.” He has scheduled a vote for Kavanaugh, who is now poised to be confirmed to the Supreme Court after a signal of approval from two Republican swing-vote senators, for Friday.

FiveThirtyEight’s famous poll expert Nate Silver even says there’s “something there” in the Kavanaugh backlash, but cautioned it should not be exaggerated.

“Overall, I’m inclined to conclude there’s actually something there for Republicans — that their position has genuinely improved from where it was a week ago,” Silver wrote. “There is truth in the idea that Republicans have had a decent week of polling, but it can also be exaggerated by cherrypicking data that’s consistent with a particular narrative.”

The case for Democrats

As noted by Silver, cherrypicking polling data to fit a particular narrative is a questionable tactic, and one that Democrats could avail themselves of as comfortably as Republicans. Since Kavanaugh’s hearing, some Democrats have also seen a boost. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat and one of the Kavanaugh swing votes, is coming in with solid polling numbers. And Democrats in Arizona, Minnesota, and Florida have seen boosts. An Ipsos poll also shows that Democrats have increased their generic ballot lead since Kavanaugh and Ford testified.

But polling — especially polling of progressives — has proven consistently unreliable. A few examples: The GOP’s worst nightmare Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was trailing Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley by 36 points in one poll leading up to the primary in New York but ended up delivering a 15-point victory; Florida’s gubernatorial primary polling had Andrew Gillum, the eventual winner of the Democratic primary, coming in in fourth place; and, of course, Trump himself, who was projected to lose to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That’s because pollsters essentially have no idea if they’re interviewing a representative sample of voters, experts say.

But even if you do buy polling, Kavanaugh was already one of the least popular Supreme Court nominees in recent history, even before his numbers tanked during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

And although a poll indicates that Republicans are showing an increased voting enthusiasm, that doesn’t necessarily indicate a decrease in political enthusiasm on the left. Progressive and leftists are calling it a tactic to discredit an upswing in progressive enthusiasm.

The New York Times’ White House reporter Maggie Haberman predicted that, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, it’s likely that Democrats’ anger over the process would have more staying power than the Republicans’ temporary increase in enthusiasm.

And, privately, some Republicans say they believe Kavanaugh is a two-sided coin for the GOP. Republicans told the Hill that Kavanaugh was energizing their base but doing little to help in swing states, where lawmakers like Rep. Leonard Lance are in danger of losing their seats. Republicans see Kavanaugh as a positive for the Senate and a drawback for the House.

Cover image: Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill September 4, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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It’s actually the top stressor in the country — even more than money or work, according to the American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America survey. A majority of Americans, 59 percent, also believe the country is in the lowest period they can ever remember, including respondents who lived through Pearl Harbor and World War II.

Sixty-three percent of respondents consider the future of the U.S. a source of stress, while 62 percent feel stressed about money and 61 percent about work. And as you might expect, 73 percent of Democrats are worried about the country’s future. But more conservative folks aren’t exactly at ease about America’s path either; 59 percent of Independents and 56 percent of Republicans said they’re stressed too.

“We’re seeing significant stress transcending party lines,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., the American Psychological Association’s chief executive officer. “The uncertainty and unpredictability tied to the future of our nation is affecting the health and well-being of many Americans in a way that feels unique to this period in recent history.”

These elevated stress levels could be having a negative effect on people’s health. Lying awake at night during the previous month is up 5 percent from 2016 to 45 percent, and a third of Americans said stress is causing them to feel nervous, anxious, irritable, angry, or fatigued.

The survey, conducted in August, included 3,440 adults of varying ages and genders and from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. That data was then weighted to reflect respondents’ relative proportions of the U.S. population.

READ: Regular weed smokers have 20 percent more sex, study says

Unfortunately, a news overload might be part of the problem. Fifty-six percent of Americans surveyed said they want to stay informed about the news but doing so caused them stress.

“With 24-hour news networks and conversations with friends, family, and other connections on social media, it’s hard to avoid the constant stream of stress around issues of national concern,” Evans said.

It’s important to note that not every group is feeling more stressed than usual. White people’s 2017 stress levels remained the same as in 2016, while Hispanic’s average stress level went from 5.0 (on a 10-point scale) in 2016 to 5.2 this year, and black people’s average stress level went from 4.7 to 5.0.

The good news? At least it’s not just you. The bad news? Well, you’re surrounded by it all the time.

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A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows the US public is very divided on issues of food and nutrition. But if you look at a controversial report—which the British Medical Journal just doubled-down on—on the science behind our nutrition guidelines, it’s not too surprising that none of us seems to know what we ought to be eating.

When it comes to organic produce, for example, 55 percent of Americans believe it’s healthier for you, while 41 percent say it’s neither better nor worse than conventional crops, according to the Pew survey, which polled a nationally representative pool of 1,480 US adults. The public is equally split on genetically-modified foods: 48 percent say they’re neither better nor worse for your health than non-GM crops, while 39 percent say they’re worse for you.

If you’re curious, most research has shown that genetically-modified crops are safe to eat and no worse or better for your health than non-GM foods. As for organic foods, the jury is still outon whether they’re actually any healthier for you.

Seventy-three percent of respondents said that they were at least partially concerned with eating healthy and nutritious foods, while 72 percent said healthy eating was “very important” to improving the chances for a long and healthy life. But despite these beliefs, there’s not a lot of consensus on what eating healthy actually means.

With so much confusion, where can the average eater turn to get straight-forward advice on what to put down their gullet? Your doctor probably isn’t much help—GPs don’t actually get any nutrition training in medical school. How about the government? Our tax dollars fund heavily-researched, expansive nutrition guidelines that are updated every five years. These guidelines help determine nutrition labeling, school lunch programs, and research funding. Surely that’s a font of nutritional knowledge, right? Well, maybe not quite.

A controversial investigation published last year in the British Medical Journal criticized the underlying report that serves as the foundation for the US government nutrition guidelines. According to the report, the advisory committee—a group of a dozen or so experts who review the current scientific literature and draft a report that informs the guidelines—didn’t use all of the tools at its disposal to ensure a thorough report. A massive library created by the Department of Agriculture to assist in systematic reviews of scientific literature, for example, wasn’t used for more than 70 percent of the topics the board considered, according to the BMJ report.

After this investigation was published, more than 100 scientists called for a retraction, stating that the report was factually incorrect. On Friday, the British Medical Journal announced that, after an external, independent review, it’s decided to stand by the report—though it did publish a correction and a clarification on some of the details that were wrong. The reviewers felt the criticism was “within the realm of scientific debate” and didn’t warrant a retraction.

“Healthcare is rife with controversy and the field of nutrition more so than many, characterized as it is by much weak science, polarized opinion, and powerful commercial interests,” said Dr Fiona Godlee, The BMJ‘s Editor in chief, in a press release. “But nutrition is perhaps one of the most important and neglected of all health disciplines, traditionally relegated to non-medical nutritionists rather than being, as we believe it deserves to be, a central part of medical training and practice”

So while the report may not have been correct in all of its criticism of the science behind the nutrition guidelines, most of the concerns still stand, and it the controversy surrounding BMJ‘s investigation shows that even nutritional scientists can be as divided as the American public.

The one thing that is agreed upon: the old tenants of health eating haven’t changed much over the years, even as the details become more refined. Just try to avoid the processed foods, eat your vegetables, and don’t lose any sleep if you have a slice of bacon once in awhile.

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There’s no doubt that vaping is becoming increasingly popular among teens. But what’s not so clear is how concerned we need to be over this trend. Are kids who would have smoked choosing e-cigarettes instead, which are widely shown to be less harmful than cigarettes? Or are kids who wouldn’t have smoked at all getting drawn in by vaping and eventually going on to smoke real cigarettes?

A survey study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal went straight to the source to find out more about which kids are vaping and why. Over 2,000 high school freshman from Ontario’s Niagara region were surveyed on their smoking and vaping habits. While only 10 percent of respondents said they had tried an e-cigarette—and the majority of those kids, 56 percent, had only tried it once—most of those teens said they tried vaping because it was “cool, fun, or something new.”

It also showed that the teens who had tried e-cigarettes were also more likely to have risk factors associated with smoking, like having family members or friends who smoke. So it raises the question: are e-cigarettes a less harmful path for kids that were probably going to smoke anyway or a gateway for kids who might have avoided tobacco if not for a new trendy gadget?

“I don’t know if you can necessarily tease that apart,” Dr. Michael Khoury, a pediatrician and lead author of the study, told me over the phone. “We just have to be careful. When we see what happens to adolescent cigarette smoking rates in the coming years, that will be a suggestion as to whether or not e-cigarettes have played a role.”

Proponents of vaping tend to get testy about studies that suggest teens are vaping more, or that vaping is a gateway to smoking. They’re worried that overemphasizing the problem will lead to regulation that will strip away this harm reduction tool from the adults who need it. A study published last week in Nicotine and Tobacco Research projected that e-cigarettes could lead to a 21 percent reduction in smoking-attributable deaths, and another recent survey found an estimated 6.1 million European smokers had quit by switching to vaping.

Khoury said that while there’s growing evidence that vaping can be a successful harm reduction tool among adults looking to quit smoking, this survey shows that—at least in this one population of youth—that’s not what’s motivating teens to vape. And if teens are vaping for other reasons, particularly if they then go on to smoke as some studies have shown, that should be cause for concern.

“I’m not saying it’s a fact, but it’s a cause for concern and we need to be looking at it within the scope of something that could be useful to adults,” Khoury said. “It’s not like we’re talking about heroin or alcohol or any other drug. We’re talking about something that could be potentially useful under the right circumstances as a harm reduction device.”

In other words: just because vaping can be a harm reduction tool doesn’t mean it’s harmless in all scenarios. The best way for vaping to be more widely accepted for the good it does is to reduce the harm it may have, and that means keeping it out of the hands of kids trying to look cool.

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