The tech trends you’ll have to live with in 2025

We’re calling it now: 2025 is going to be a pretty weird year. Wouldn’t it be nice to be prepared for what’s to come?

Sadly, predicting the future is as imperfect a practice as it’s ever been. But at least when it comes to the ways our relationships with technology stand to shift, we have a few educated guesses for you.

This year, expect the biggest names in tech to push artificial intelligence and face computers even harder than before. You may gravitate toward smaller, tighter-knit communities online. And if you’re in the market for a new car in 2025, your decision might be a little tougher than you expected.

And that’s just the start. Last week, leading luminaries, scrappy upstarts, and countless hangers-on gathered in Las Vegas for CES, the annual technology confab that doubles as a barometer for what tech companies of all sizes have decided are important in the new year.

Here’s our brief primer on the tech trends you’ll have to grapple with as 2025 rolls on.

2025 has barely begun, but you should get ready to deal with the techy fallout stemming from some key policy choices.

There is, of course, the looming specter of tariffs on products imported from Canada, Mexico, and especially China, which manufactures many of the world’s consumer electronics.

Certain kinds of smartphones, tablets, laptop computers, wireless headphones, and even video game consoles could see notable price hikes as 2025 unfolds, though tech CEOs have recently moved to firm up their relationships with the incoming Trump administration.

Speaking of our wallets, President-elect Donald Trump has also signaled his willingness to ax a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles, which could make the prospect of picking out a new car this year a little more complicated. That’s not just bad news for car shoppers trying to ease their burden on the environment; automakers are also keen for Trump to maintain those EV tax incentives.

Then there’s TikTok — with its 170 million U.S. users and army of professional content creators — which could be banned as soon as Jan. 19. President Joe Biden signed a law requiring the Beijing-based company to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban.

Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, has said he opposes blocking downloads of TikTok and its accompanying video editor app CapCut. He could refuse to enforce the ban after it goes into effect, though TikTok might be unavailable while the Trump administration irons things out.

The list goes on: Net neutrality rules have been rolled back, popular drones used for filmmaking and farming could get banned, the incoming chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has pledged to fight a Big Tech “censorship” cartel, not to mention ongoing antitrust cases against Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.

Our advice? Buckle up.

Surely you saw this one coming.

Big Tech CEOs are investing billions of dollars into conversational AI, while some critics say the technology is overhyped. Either way, you’ll see more of it this year.

Curiously, though, some experts say you may actually hear about it less. If 2024 was the year AI graduated from impressive tech demos to meaningful products, said Deloitte chief futurist Mike Bechtel, this year might see AI finally start to feel mundane.

“2025 really looks to be AI kind of melting into becoming the foundation that matters more than ever but gets talked about less than ever,” Bechtel said. “Electricity is pervasive, but we don’t yak about it anymore. It’s just presumed.”

That shift into mainstream life will take lots of different shapes.

AI’s role in the workplace and K-12 classrooms will, in all likelihood, continue to expand. Relationships with chatbots, like Replika and Character.ai’s talkative avatars, will become more normalized — for better or worse. And even though early AI gadgets like Humane’s AI pin fell flat almost instantly, lots of other companies are getting ready to take their own swings at AI wearables and computers.

We’ve been talking about online echo chambers for years, but in 2025 people will continue migrating away from large platforms toward smaller, like-minded online communities.

Twitter-now-X, for instance, used to be the front page of the internet, where you could quickly get up to speed on the day’s news and start weighing in. Now, its feed is crammed with retweets from owner Elon Musk, and a chunk of its users started accounts on Bluesky, the relatively small Twitter clone that’s known for a left-leaning audience.

More intimate online spaces aren’t always a bad thing, as Tumblr communities and Neopets guilds taught us in the aughts. Make a Discord server for your close friends, join a subreddit for that one weird book you love, or support your favorite writer on Substack.

Just keep your media literacy in mind and fact-check claims, even when they come from someone you generally agree with.

Big Tech won’t stop trying to make face computers happen.

What’s changing, though, are the experiences some of these companies expect us to have with them.

The bubble of hype around the metaverse — in which we’ll all slip into avatars and commune in shared virtual spaces, hasn’t popped but seems to have shrunk considerably. Instead, expect companies like Meta, Google, and Samsung to further push the idea of “spatial computing,“ where the real world and the digital tools you use to get things done in it collide.

“We’ve seen a market move from a virtual world that’s an escape from one’s real world to a sort of mixed-reality experience,” Bechtel said.

Imagine popping on a headset or a pair of reasonably normal-looking glasses, and seeing your favorite apps or turn-by-turn walking directions emerge in the air in front of you. Now imagine being able to interact with those digital elements with your hands. That’s what spatial computing is all about.

And if that sounds familiar, well, it should: Apple’s expensive Vision Pro headset launched in 2024 pushing that very idea, and was met with much fanfare and soft demand. It’s proof that tech companies need to find a way to make wearable spatial computers cost a lot less, and fast.

U.S. lawmakers have tried and failed to pass legislation protecting children nationwide from a variety of online threats, from extremist content to allegedly addictive app features.

As some U.S. states and foreign countries barrel ahead with tech-related legal protections for minors — Australia banned social media for people under 16 in November — pressure will mount on federal lawmakers to address what many parents see as a danger to children.

Experts disagree on whether social media has a negative impact on the mental health of kids and teens. The U.S. Surgeon General has said he believes lawmakers should put limits and warnings on social media apps as we wait for conclusive evidence of its impact.