While millennials were busy mocking their warnings as "technophobic nonsense," these supposedly out-of-touch boomers accurately predicted everything from screen addiction to the death of privacy—and 25 years later, their "paranoid" concerns read like a checklist of modern life's biggest problems.
Add VegOut to your Google News feed. 
I remember sitting in our faculty lounge in 1998, listening to my older colleagues make dire predictions about this new thing called the World Wide Web.
The younger teachers rolled their eyes and whispered about "technophobes" and "dinosaurs." But here's the thing: Twenty-five years later, those supposedly out-of-touch boomers turned out to be prophets.
They saw the future more clearly than any of us tech-embracing youngsters did.
Last week, I was having coffee with a former colleague who reminded me of those discussions. "Remember when everyone thought we were crazy?" she laughed, but there was sadness in it too.
We'd watched every one of our predictions come true, and not in good ways. Looking back, I realize we weren't brilliant futurists. We'd just lived long enough to recognize patterns that the starry-eyed younger generation couldn't see.
1) People will become addicted to their screens
Do you remember when "internet addiction" sounded like a joke? In 1998, my department chair warned that students would become dependent on screens for dopamine hits.
The school board members actually laughed out loud. "It's just a tool," they said. "Like a really advanced encyclopedia."
Now I watch my own grandchildren struggle through what they call "digital detox," their hands literally shaking when separated from their devices. My neighbor's teenager recently had a panic attack when her phone died during a family camping trip.
The addiction treatment center in our town now has a whole wing dedicated to screen addiction, right next to substance abuse. We saw it coming when everyone else saw liberation and endless possibility.
2) Privacy will become a quaint memory
My late husband used to refuse to shop online in 1998, convinced that "these companies will track everything about us." His younger coworkers called him paranoid.
They'd explain, patiently, that privacy laws would protect consumers, that companies wouldn't dare abuse trust.
Fast forward to last month: I mentioned to my sister that my knees were bothering me, and within hours, ads for joint supplements appeared on every website I visited.
My credit card company knows more about my habits than my children do. They predict what I'll buy before I know I want it. My husband wasn't paranoid; if anything, he underestimated how complete the surveillance would become.
3) Entire professions will vanish overnight
"What will happen to all the travel agents?" my friend asked in 1998. "The librarians? The bank tellers?" People assured us that new jobs would replace the old ones, that the economy would adapt, that workers would retrain.
They made it sound so simple, so inevitable, so painless.
But I've watched former students in their fifties suddenly unemployable, their decades of expertise worthless overnight. My cousin spent thirty years perfecting his craft as a typesetter.
By 2005, his entire industry had evaporated. The "retraining" everyone promised? Try learning to code at 55 with a mortgage to pay. We predicted the devastation, but nobody wanted to hear about the human cost of progress.
4) Basic skills will atrophy
In 1998, I attended a conference where a veteran teacher predicted that spell-check would destroy literacy. "If machines do the thinking," she argued, "brains stop developing those pathways."
The conference organizer actually took the microphone away from her, apologizing for the "negativity."
That teacher was right about everything. My current tutoring students can't spell without autocorrect. They've never learned the patterns, the roots, the logic of language.
Cursive writing? It might as well be hieroglyphics. I recently received a wedding invitation that was clearly written by a computer pretending to be the bride. Even personal expression has been outsourced to machines.
5) Information monopolies will control what we know
There was an older librarian at our public library who warned in 1998 that "five companies will decide what information survives." People thought she'd lost it.
The internet was supposed to democratize information, not concentrate it. Anyone could publish anything! Freedom!
How naive we were. Now, if something isn't on the first page of search results, it essentially doesn't exist. A handful of companies decide what's "authoritative," what's "misinformation," what deserves to be seen.
That librarian saw it all coming. She understood that abundance of information without curation just creates chaos, and chaos demands control.
6) Truth will become optional
"Mark my words," my mother said in 1998, "when everyone can publish, nobody will fact-check."
She refused to believe anything she read online, treating it all as suspect. We thought she was being needlessly skeptical, unable to appreciate the democratization of publishing.
Mother died before the term "fake news" became common, but she would have recognized the phenomenon immediately.
Last week, three different friends forwarded me the same false health claim, each swearing it was true because it "looked professional."
We've created a world where truth isn't determined by facts but by how many times something gets shared.
7) Human connection will become performative
The saddest prediction came from my aunt, who said in 1998 that "computers will turn friendship into a show." She worried that relationships would become about display rather than genuine connection.
Everyone assured her that technology would bring people closer together.
Instead, I watch my grandchildren curate their lives for strangers' approval. They have hundreds of "friends" but nobody to call when they're crying. Birthdays have become opportunities for public displays of affection that ring hollow.
Real intimacy, the kind that requires vulnerability and presence, has become almost extinct. My aunt saw it all coming: When connection becomes easy, it becomes meaningless.
Final thoughts
We weren't pessimists or prophets. We'd just lived through enough cycles of human nature to know that technology amplifies who we already are.
It doesn't transform us into better people; it just makes us ourselves, but faster and louder. The youngsters who dismissed our concerns in 1998 believed technology would override human weakness.
We knew better. We'd learned that every tool humanity creates reflects both our genius and our flaws, and the internet would be no different.
What’s Your Plant-Powered Archetype?
Ever wonder what your everyday habits say about your deeper purpose—and how they ripple out to impact the planet?
This 90-second quiz reveals the plant-powered role you’re here to play, and the tiny shift that makes it even more powerful.
12 fun questions. Instant results. Surprisingly accurate.
