What Will Seem Ridiculous in 20 Years?

Every generation looks back and wonders how people ever lived the way they did.

There was a time when families shared one television, people queued at the bank on a Saturday morning and maps were unfolded across the bonnet of the car before every long journey.

Today, those things seem almost unbelievable to younger generations.

So it begs the question: what are we doing now that people in 2046 will laugh about?

Carrying chargers everywhere

We’ve all experienced it.

You leave the house and immediately start wondering whether your phone battery will last the day.

Power banks have become almost as essential as wallets, and many of us instinctively look for a charging point the moment we sit down in a café, airport or train station.

In 20 years, battery technology may have advanced so much that charging every day feels as old-fashioned as winding up a clock.

Having dozens of passwords

Most people have passwords for banking, shopping, streaming, work, email, social media and countless other services.

Even with password managers, it can still feel like a full-time job keeping track of them all.

Future generations might simply laugh at the idea that we had to remember strings of letters, numbers and symbols just to log in.

Sitting in traffic

With advances in transport technology, remote working and smarter traffic systems, perhaps our grandchildren will wonder why millions of people spent hours every week sitting in queues of stationary cars.

It may seem as outdated as waiting in line for a payphone.

Throwing so much away

One thing we may look back on with regret is just how much we waste.

Fast fashion, single-use plastics, unnecessary packaging and replacing gadgets instead of repairing them could all become relics of another era.

Future generations may see today’s throwaway culture as one of the strangest habits of the early 21st century.

Watching adverts on purpose

Streaming has already changed how we watch television, but many people still sit through adverts or pay extra to avoid them.

Perhaps in 20 years entertainment will be so personalised that commercial breaks seem like an odd interruption from the past.

Scanning supermarket checkouts ourselves

Self-service checkouts have become a normal part of shopping, but perhaps one day we’ll simply walk in, pick up what we need and leave while technology automatically knows what we’ve bought.

Stopping to scan every item ourselves might seem surprisingly old-fashioned.

Carrying physical keys

House keys, car keys and office keys have been part of daily life for generations.

As smart locks and digital security continue to develop, future homeowners may wonder why we carried jangling bunches of metal in our pockets.

Worrying about running out of data

Remember when mobile data limits were something everyone checked?

In the future, unlimited, high-speed connectivity almost everywhere could make today’s concerns seem quaint.

Looking back with a smile

Of course, nobody really knows what life will look like in 20 years.

Some of today’s technology may disappear altogether, while other things we can’t yet imagine will become completely ordinary.

One thing is certain though.

Just as we smile at cassette tapes, video rental shops, paper maps and dial-up internet, future generations will almost certainly look at parts of modern life and wonder, “How did they ever put up with that?”

And if history tells us anything, they’ll probably be right.