Frontline behavioural themes for 2025
A historical comparison shows how 2025 could be a year of crisis and reinvention
What are the behavioural themes will we be talking about on Frontline Be Sci in 2025? To help answer this question it can be useful to find a period in history so we can draw some parallels with the current day, giving us some clues about the directions we might be taking.
After some thought, the period we have chosen is 1780–1850 for two key reasons. First, it is defined by the technology disruption of the Industrial Revolution which both disrupted livelihoods as well as creating new a new economy. And second, it was a time when religious and spiritual movements emerged, based around notions of apocalyptic judgment and utopian renewal.
Today, it seems we face a similarly turbulent landscape. Health threats such as bird flu, underscored by our collective global experience of COVID, highlight our continued vulnerability in an interconnected world. The rapid rise of AI is disrupting labour markets and in doing so challenging societal notions of identity, creativity, and control. Geopolitical tensions alongside hard-to-understand threats such as cybercrime echo the instability of the early 19th century, with the existential threat of climate change creating a backdrop of apocalyptic urgency.
And just as in the past, today's challenges seem to be driving a sense of collective reckoning, fostering mindsets that blend existential dread with visions of renewal, from rethinking the economy and how we manage nature to crypto-anarchists visions of reorganising society and or and the use of psychedelics as a means to rethink health and societal healing.
So what does this mean for the topics we think we will be covering in 2025? By far from an exhaustive list, here is our list.
1. Life on the Edge
The era of the ‘polycrisis’ is far from over. Pandemics, climate disasters, and economic instability are disrupting shared norms and creating widespread uncertainty what Emile Durkheim called anomie. This breakdown of shared norms and meaning suggests people and communities must adapt to environments where we can no longer rely on traditional guidelines for relationships and living.
With this in mind, sociologist Eva Illouz’s work, The End of Love, sets out the way that in an era of instability, people will be driven into short-term, low-risk relationships over enduring commitments. Yet, paradoxically at the same time, shared vulnerability can also drive people to form new types of relationships. This dual effect seems to have the potential to reshape how people and communities organize, balancing disengagement with innovation in collective support systems.
Historically, periods of upheaval, such as our era of 1780–1850, have led to the increase in low-risk forms of intimacy such as ‘bundling’, the traditional practice of wrapping a couple together in a bed sometimes with a board between the two of them, allowing intimacy and conversation without full commitment. At the same time, the creation of mutual aid societies and workers’ cooperatives, meant people could pool resources to provide financial support and healthcare. Spiritual movements like Methodism in Britain and the Great Awakening in the United States are cases in point, each offering a sense of hope and belonging during times of upheaval.
We see these dynamics today in the continued rise of online dating which appears to be ever more transactional, arguably reflecting the theme of short term, non-committed relationships. And the flipside is the new types of relationships and solidarity structures such as decentralized resource-sharing platforms Nextdoor and Olio, which enable neighbours to exchange goods, services, and emotional support.
The changing environment of love, sex and relationships is something we will be exploring in more detail in 2025 alongside how, in blasted landscapes, we also fundamentally rethink the way we relate to others and create new forms of support and solidarity.
2. Breaking the Code
Shoshana Zuboff (amongst others such as Cory Doctrow and Evgeny Morozov) has set out the way that AI systems appear to increasingly control access to resources and opportunities. Zuboff argues the way it can create opaque bureaucracies that reinforce inequality means there are calls for greater fairness and transparency. Just as the nineteenth century’s technologies entrenched class divides and prompted movements like the Chartists, so the rise of algorithmic systems are now sparking demands for equitable and ethical governance of digital technologies.
How we go about adapting and pushing back against AI will be key for many groups in society, and we suspect that personal strategies to navigate these systems will become more widespread. It may well be that collective efforts gain momentum, both campaigns advocating for algorithmic transparency and fairness as well as the rise of cooperative platforms and open-source AI tools that emphasize community ownership and control.
The often-murky epistemic environment of AI means that the way we engage in sense-making will continue to be a keen focus in 2025. The recent debates over content moderation is just one example – with a vigorous debate on whether we rely on self-moderation to deliver fairness in the public square of social media against the tide of AI generated content.
In this light, we will be looking more closely at the way we talk about and make sense of misinformation, deep fakes and conspiracy theories, given they are intimately tied up with AI. Whether these topics continue to be considered to be failures of human cognition, will be ever more contested with alternative accounts suggesting they are attempts by elite groups to shape discourse, or indeed moral panics that distract from more systemic problems, will be a much wider discussion in 2025.
3. The Moral Divide
Climate change, alongside many other topics, has become a deeply moralized issue, dividing us in binary ways into either ‘saviours’ and ‘deniers.’ Paul Rozin and Allan Brandt suggests this means differences are harder to reconcile, with the resulting competing identities leading to solutions being tougher than ever to arrive at.
With this backdrop we may well see the continued rise of sostalgia, by which we mean a feeling of nostalgia for a world that will not exist in the future. This echoes the 1780–1850 period of existential uncertainties with narratives of apocalyptic collapse: one religious group known as Millerites had up to 100,000 followers in the US. They saw the economic crises and political instability as signs of the impending apocalypse. Indeed, many adherents abandoned their livelihoods in anticipation of the Second Coming with some even donning white robes and gathering on hilltops, believing they would ascend to heaven.
We are certainly seeing the way the similar mechanisms are being played out today, with apocalyptic rhetoric used by politicians and pressure groups alike. And as in the 19th century, belief systems can diverge with fundamentally different prescriptions being promoted for ‘correct’ ways of living (e.g. in health and wellness).
As the recent fires in LA have shown, we live in a world where some communities are more insulated by hazards than others, where resources are unequally constrained. But as risks, such as fire, starts to impact a much wider group of people, then we are likely to see much more negotiation about how we determine what is fair, how we are saved from a ‘final judgement’ and how we might find consensus across very different systems of ethics.
4. Beyond Borders
One area where we may see different ethical considerations emerge is the way borders start to dissolve between traditional identity-defining groups. Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities has long set out the way that globalization and digital connectivity facilitates identities that go beyond national boundaries. Migration, climate crises, and digital activism are increasingly challenging the logic of nation-states, offering fertile ground for global citizenship movements. Achille Mbembe’s book Necropolitics set out the way that the flow of people, media, and ideas can fundamentally reshape citizen belonging and sovereignty.
We can also see this reflected in the 19th-century transnational networks of abolitionists and missionaries, who bypassed national borders building solidarity (not uncontroversially) around shared values. Today, movements for climate justice and universal human rights similarly connect activists across countries, challenging nationalist policies.
Of course, the political environment is one where borderless movements spark tensions: the psychology of identity will therefore be a huge issue in 2025. This raises questions concerning the way people define themselves in ways that cross traditional identity boundaries, how this impacts which ideas they side with, and with this, the extent to which displaced peoples supported versus rejected.
5. Power in Numbers
Digital tools have changed the landscape for political movements, now coordinating hybrid online and offline strategies, as set out by thinkers like Zeynep Tufekci. This echoes the Chartist movement of the 19th century, where mass printing technology was used to unite dispersed communities to demand systemic reform.
Today’s movements reflect a shift toward decentralized collective action, emphasizing grassroots coordination and shared leadership. Participants use encrypted messaging to plan rapid-response protests or synchronize global actions, such as coordinated climate strikes across multiple cities. A tangible example of creative protest can be seen in the Black Lives Matter protests, where activists used augmented reality apps to project virtual monuments and art installations in public spaces, amplifying their message digitally.
How people understand themselves and who their ‘tribe’ are through digital tools, the way they are used to organise and network, the motivations for connecting and relating in this way will all be a focus in 2025. We are moving beyond narrow conceptions of ‘echo chambers’ and seeing the way that a much more nuanced understanding is emerging of the psychology of social media and the way it can facilitate both division and solidarity.
6. Work Reimagined
With the added push of AI, we can look again at the work of people like David Graeber who highlighted that much modern work, for many in the population, lacks purpose, spurring people to seek meaning and authenticity in other ways. This seems to mirror the era 1780–1850 when the shift from craft-based to mechanized labour meant struggles for dignity and fulfilment for much of the population.
It could be that "identity work" will emerge as people increasingly seek to prioritize personal growth, social impact, and ethical contributions over traditional productivity metrics. A tangible example of this is the way people are engaging in community-focused initiatives, such as urban farming cooperatives or mental health support networks, where their work directly impacts societal well-being. And the threat of the Great Resignation 2.0 is being discussed, with the risk that workers will leave employers that do not meet their expectations for meaningful engagement, personal fulfilment, and alignment with their values.
How we understand people in the workplace and their motivations for engagement stands at the centre of this: this means not only understanding the ways that people consider the political nature of our work and its societal impact but also how organisations are organised and the degree to which they enable autonomy and mastery in the workforce.
7. Connection in a Fractured World
As ‘vertical’, top-down trust in traditional institutions erodes, we will see the way that horizontal trust (where we seek credibility through peer networks, lived experience, and decentralized communities) continues to build, which requires relational care and connection rather than assumed authority.
A similar pattern was evident in the 19th century, when distrust of industrial elites led to groups such as the Shakers, who rejected mainstream institutions, creating self-sufficient, egalitarian communities where governance was based on shared participation rather than imposed authority.
We see this very clearly in the wellness space where confidence in healthcare systems continues to be under pressure, not only from a perception of the negative impact of vested interests but also the rise of alternative, peer-based, health belief systems.
However, these horizontal trust networks will often prioritise relatability and shared scepticism over evidence-based rigor, so narratives that challenge institutional authority without robust alternatives (such as anti-vaccine communities on social media) get attention paid to them.
These perspectives are frequently co-opted by far-right political movements, embedding health misinformation within broader ideological frameworks. We saw this during COVID, where concerns about vaccination, initially fuelled by distrust in pharmaceutical and governmental institutions, were absorbed into ‘diagonalist’ movements—groups that cut across traditional left-right political divides but share a common suspicion of centralized authority.
The challenge here is whether there can be a progressive form of diagonalism. Perhaps this is possible if there is focus by more traditional experts on trust-building strategies to foster engagement and collective problem-solving. This will require institutions to move beyond top-down messaging and create spaces for deliberation, discussion, and negotiated trust, ensuring that expertise is not just transmitted, but meaningfully integrated into evolving social trust networks.
Overall, 2025 feels like the year where we can see more clearly how we are standing at a moment where old structures are eroding, and new forms of organization are emerging. Like the period 1780–1850, we are set to be witnessing both crisis and reinvention.