4 False Predictions About This Decade

You might have a lot to look forward to in the coming decade: Maybe your children will graduate from college, maybe you’ll become a grandparent, and perhaps you’ll retire. The 2020s probably aren’t what a lot of us expected they would be so far because of COVID, but there’s plenty of time for things to improve. Ultimately, no one can predict the future, but let’s look at some predictions that have already been proven false about this decade.

Life expectancy will rise past 100

Although life expectancies have been steadily increasing, they’re not quite at 100. The current life expectancy in the U.S. is a little over 79 years.[1] This has increased from 68 in 1950, but we’re not quite at 100 yet. However, the number of Americans who are 100 has more than doubled in the last 40 years.[2]

No one will use books anymore 

With the invention of laptops and Kindles, many have predicted that paper books will become obsolete. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that by 2020, paper books and documents would rarely be used, and most would be scanned and available online. And while the second part of this is true, the first isn’t: The U.S. book publishing industry sold 750.9 million print books in 2021.[3]

We’ll have flying cars

Movies set in the future always seem to have these, but where are they? Self-driving cars are still being tested, and there don’t seem to be any hover cars about. However, Porsche and Boeing are partnering to make a “premium urban air mobility vehicle.”[4] Uber also plans to launch a flying taxi service in 2023. So there may still be some hope for this prediction!

Humans will set foot on Mars

In 1996, the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council predicted that NASA would land humans on Mars by 2018. This hasn’t happened yet, but we have landed eight unmanned spacecraft on Mars. Sending astronauts to Mars someday certainly isn’t out of the question, but there’s a lot of work to be done first.