Alright, we’re officially in May 2023 now (and a few weeks till school break!). Looking at the first 4 months’ news and trends, we can reasonably expect to hear about more development in those few areas:

The year technology gets more personal than ever

2023 feels like a turning point. Not in the dramatic, everything-changes-overnight way that technology headlines tend to promise, but in a quieter and perhaps more significant sense — the year that several powerful digital trends converge and begin to reshape not just what we do online, but how we think, feel, and relate to one another. The technologies on the horizon are not entirely new, but they are maturing rapidly, and their psychological implications are only beginning to be understood. From the blurring of virtual and real experience to the weaponization of synthetic media, from the growing recognition that screen time has real mental health costs to the murky ethics of influence at scale — 2023 is shaping up to be a year in which the relationship between technology and the human psyche becomes impossible to ignore. What follows is a look at the five digital trends most likely to shape our inner and outer lives in the year ahead, and what each of them might mean for how we experience reality, community, and ourselves.

Augmented and virtual reality will start to feel uncomfortably real

For years, AR and VR have existed in a kind of perpetual almost — almost mainstream, almost convincing, almost transformative. 2023 may be the year the almost finally drops. The hardware is improving, the content is expanding, and the social and gaming applications of these technologies are growing rapidly in both sophistication and reach. On the positive side, the potential is genuinely exciting. VR environments offer new possibilities for social connection, immersive education, therapeutic applications, and experiences that were previously impossible or inaccessible. For someone with limited mobility, a phobia, or a desire to explore environments beyond their physical reach, well-designed VR can be life-expanding.

But the psychological implications deserve careful attention. Recent research comparing real-life and virtual reality experiences — specifically, studies examining height exposure in both contexts — found that photorealistic VR environments were capable of triggering identical cognitive and emotional responses to real-world experiences, measured by the same brain wave patterns and heart rate variability. In other words, the brain, at a measurable physiological level, may not reliably distinguish between a VR experience and a real one. This is an extraordinary finding with profound implications. If the emotional and cognitive machinery of the brain responds to virtual experience as though it were real, then the content of those experiences matters enormously — and so do the risks of addiction, disorientation, and gradual disassociation from physical reality. The more convincing VR becomes, the more seriously we need to think about what we are choosing to immerse ourselves in, and for how long.

Deepfake technology will make truth harder to trust

If VR challenges our relationship with experience, deepfake technology challenges our relationship with evidence itself. Deepfakes — hyper-realistic synthetic videos and images generated by artificial intelligence — are no longer the clunky, obviously fake content of a few years ago. In 2023, the technology has reached a level of sophistication that makes detection genuinely difficult even for trained observers, and its proliferation is accelerating. The implications span an enormous range, from the relatively benign to the deeply alarming.

On the constructive end, deepfake technology offers real creative and educational possibilities — realistic special effects in film, the restoration of historical figures and events for educational purposes, and the simulation of specific scenarios for training environments. These are legitimate and genuinely valuable applications. But the darker side of the technology is where 2023 is likely to make its mark. In politics, deepfakes are increasingly being used to fabricate footage of public figures saying or doing things they never said or did, with the explicit intention of spreading false information, influencing public opinion, and discrediting opponents. The speed at which synthetic media spreads on social platforms means that a convincing deepfake can reach millions of people before any correction or debunking has a chance to catch up. Research into deepfake technology has also highlighted the significant threat it poses to businesses, whose reputations can be damaged by fabricated content, and to private individuals, who may find themselves the subjects of blackmail, harassment, identity theft, defamation, or non-consensual intimate imagery. The psychological impact of discovering that a fabricated version of you exists and is circulating online is a harm that has barely begun to be addressed in law or in practice. In 2023, the need for both technical detection tools and legal frameworks to address deepfake-based deception is more urgent than it has ever been.

Digital wellness will move from buzzword to genuine priority

For most of the past decade, digital wellness has existed as a kind of aspirational concept — something people nodded at in articles about screen time before picking their phone back up. In 2023, there are genuine signs that the conversation is maturing. Awareness of the mental health costs of excessive and unregulated technology use has reached a critical mass, and more people are actively looking for tools, strategies, and frameworks to help them engage with digital life more intentionally. This is showing up in a growing adoption of mindfulness practices, screen time management tools, digital detox programs, and a broader cultural shift toward questioning the assumption that more connectivity is always better.

One area where the conversation is particularly urgent — and where the least progress has been made — is digital wellness in young children. Despite years of growing concern about the effects of screens on developing minds, there is still no established consensus on what digital wellbeing actually means for young children, nor any widely validated way to measure it. Research indicates that a complex web of factors influences how digital technology affects a young child’s wellbeing, including the duration and setting of their digital use, their individual characteristics, and crucially, the digital habits and parenting approaches of the adults around them. Children whose parents model mindful technology use tend to fare better than those whose parents do not — a finding that places significant responsibility on adults to examine their own relationships with screens before prescribing rules for their children. 2023 is likely to see this conversation grow louder, and hopefully more grounded in rigorous research rather than generalized alarm.

Cyberbullying will remain one of the most pressing psychological threats online

If there is one digital trend that many people were hoping would improve in 2023, it is cyberbullying — and unfortunately, the evidence does not offer much cause for optimism. Online harassment has become one of the most widespread and psychologically damaging features of digital life, cutting across age groups, platforms, and demographics in ways that reflect a profound and still-unresolved failure of both technology design and social norms. Research suggests that 67% of young people aged 18 to 29 have been targets of online harassment, with 41% experiencing what is described as severe cyberbullying. Nearly half of adults aged 30 to 49 report having experienced online harassment, and even among people over 50, more than one in five have been targeted. These are not fringe numbers. They describe an experience that is, for a significant proportion of people, simply part of being online.

The psychological consequences of cyberbullying are serious and well-documented. Victims report elevated levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, alongside a measurable erosion of self-worth and self-esteem. Socially, the experience can produce profound feelings of isolation, shame, and powerlessness. In the most severe cases, cyberbullying has been linked to suicidal ideation and self-harm. Even where the effects are less acute, the long-term impact can extend into relationships, academic and professional performance, and a persistent hypervigilance in everyday digital interactions. What makes cyberbullying particularly difficult to address is the way it follows its victims — unlike physical bullying, which typically has a geographic limit, online harassment can reach someone in every space they inhabit, at any hour of the day or night. In 2023, addressing this will require far more than content moderation policies. It will require a genuine reckoning with the platform design choices, social dynamics, and cultural norms that allow and even incentivize harassment to thrive.

Social media influencers will face a reckoning over trust and transparency

The influencer economy has become one of the defining features of digital culture over the past decade, and in 2023 it shows no signs of slowing down. Individuals with significant social media followings — positioned as experts, enthusiasts, or aspirational figures in fields ranging from fitness and fashion to finance and parenting — have accumulated extraordinary power to shape the opinions, attitudes, and purchasing behavior of their audiences. For brands, this has been an enormously attractive and effective marketing channel. For consumers, it has created a new kind of relationship with advertising — one that feels personal, authentic, and peer-to-peer rather than corporate and transactional.

But the cracks in this model are becoming increasingly visible, and 2023 is likely to be a year in which questions of trust, authenticity, and ethical responsibility move to the center of the conversation. Concerns about influencer marketing have been growing for some time — concerns about the promotion of products that influencers do not actually use or believe in, about undisclosed paid partnerships that violate advertising regulations, and about the broader question of what responsibility influencers bear toward the audiences who trust them. These are not just regulatory questions, though regulators are increasingly paying attention. They are psychological ones. The influencer relationship is built on a perception of authenticity and genuine connection, and when that perception is undermined — by a revealed paid promotion, a product that does not deliver, or a public persona that proves inconsistent with private behavior — the sense of betrayal that follows can be disproportionately intense. In 2023, both influencers and the brands that work with them face growing pressure to operate with greater transparency, greater accountability, and a clearer sense of the ethical responsibilities that come with the scale of influence they have accumulated.