Everything has changed

It's not recency bias and it isn't just you

It is one of the less egregious but still curious developments in the online discourse. Take this classic of the genre — two top football teams play out a 4-3 thriller with all the trimmings: red cards, end-to-end play and, of course, a last-minute winner. Soon after, a journalist posts on social media something perfectly anodyne, such as: “That might be one of the best matches of the last five years.” Cue the backlash.

The critique can have multiple entry points, and usually involves an assertion that said match was not that good, and certainly pales in comparison with example x from year y. But the conclusion is almost always the same: the writer stands accused of that great crime of our modern age — recency bias.

There is good reason to be alive to the threat of any cognitive bias. In this instance, we risk making inaccurate assessments and therefore poorer decisions by allocating too much weight to recent events over longer-term results or more relevant data. But overcorrection does little good either. Just because something happened recently ought not be cause for automatic disqualification.

In an article for The Guardian marking 40 years since the release of Back to the Future, the actress Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine Baines (you know, the one who falls in love with her own son), said something rather striking:

“If you made Back to the Future in 2025 and they went back 30 years, it would be 1995 and nothing would look that different. The phones would be different but it wouldn’t be like the strange difference between the 80s and the 50s and how different the world was.”

Now, for the purposes of transparency, I will admit to never having seen the film. But I have been alive for the last 30 years and I’ve got to tell you, I think 2025 is more different to 1995 than Thompson lets on. Consider the following four points:

First, mobile phones were not so much “different” in 1995 as they were an oddity. Only around 12% of Americans owned one, compared with 98% today. In fact, holding a conversation in public was so unusual that it was a slightly embarrassing thing to do and occasionally invited public opprobrium.

Pew

Second, not having a phone today (really, a smartphone) is considered a determinant of social and economic exclusion. It is more than a communication device — it is a portal to essential services such as banking, healthcare and transport. Smartphones have also become central to maintaining relationships and participating in the online communities that now form a core part of contemporary life.

Third, we are all content creators now. And fourth, the algorithm-driven platforms on our phones are fundamentally reshaping our information environments — and culture — in ways we do not yet fully understand, but are unlikely to be wholly benign. This threatens to explode the truth regime upon which liberal democracy has until recently flourished.

Take a look at the list of number one songs in the US for 1995. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, TLC, Boyz II Men. How many would you recognise from 2025?¹ This is partly because you are old². But also because there are so many more micro celebrities today, famous within particular subcultures with the sort of parasocial relationships that the internet has enabled to thrive.

Even stepping away from technology, the ways in which 2025 looks, sounds and feels³ different to 1995 are pervasive⁴:

• There is a land war in Europe

• The United States is on the side of the aggressor

• And is disappearing people from its own streets

• China’s nominal GDP is around $19 trillion, up from $734 billion

• Synagogues (and sometimes Jews themselves) are being repeatedly set on fire

• Global temperatures are approximately 1°C higher

• You have to take your shoes off when you fly

• We have turned HIV from a death sentence into a manageable health condition

Sure, Oasis is still playing Champagne Supernova and TLC is warning us not to go chasing waterfalls. But just scroll down or swipe right on your phone. Everything has changed — and quite recently, too.

1. Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You does not count

2. You subscribe to at least one daily newsletter and possibly even a newspaper

3. I forgot ‘smells’, given the chokehold cigarette smoke had over bars and pubs

4. This is, erm, not an exhaustive list (Urbanisation! Deindustrialisation! India!) but I’m trying to keep this newsletter concise