4 Societal Trends in the UK

By: Dylan_Moran

Every year we sit down and take a look at the trends in society; how the world is changing and what is causing that change. Technology remains a major factor of course, thanks to automation and digitisation, but there are several trends that have little to do with tech. Here’s a closer look at 4 societal trends in the UK.

1. Lifelong Learning
It seems that people are a lot less unqualified for the jobs of the future than expected. This is where the world of adult education comes into play. Some other countries such as France have heavily invested in re-educating adults and getting them ready, but the UK is falling behind. There’s never been a greater need for lifelong learning with automation destroying lots of jobs. More people are going to invest their time and money in re-education through services such as the Open University.

2. Home-Based Volunteering
More and more people are working from home. Current numbers in the UK suggest that 1.5 million people are working from home full-time, and a further 4.2 million are working at home part-time. It’s hardly surprising to think that soon we might be volunteering from home. It’s getting more difficult to physically give up even an hour of your time consistently each and every week. So expect people to start volunteering from home through things such as maintaining charity websites, answering calls remotely, and creating virus maps of disease-stricken areas.

3. Drug Addiction is Up
There are lots of potential reasons that drug addiction may be on the rise. The idea that it will soon be difficult to find a job is one of them. People are more melancholic about their chances for success in the future and are turning to something, anything, to take it all away. People are abusing drugs – even prescription drugs – like never before. We’re all over-medicated and it’s starting to show. It’s about time we did something about it. That’s where the Addiction Recovery Centre comes into play. There is always going to be hope and help out there for those that need it.

4. Automation May be Less Popular
Take a step back and really think for a second about how many decisions you are leaving to the hands of computers. Computers seem to be deciding a lot of things for us lately; they are choosing our car insurance and how much we pay for our holidays. They are having a greater impact on our lives and people are starting to wake up to that. They aren’t too happy about it. Machine learning and algorithms could soon face something of a negative response and we could see an increase in algorithm-free services. People have never trusted algorithms less and it’s going to show soon.

Summary
The world around us is changing all the time. It helps to take a step away and see what’s really changed while we weren’t looking. Machine learning and automation is up, drug addiction problems are up, and trust is at an all-time low. The good thing about society, though, is that it has a tendency to correct itself over time. Let’s see how things look in a few years’ time.

By Boris Dzhingarov

© 2018 Copyright Boris Dzhingarov - All Rights Reserved

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