The world in 2025 is growing faster, innovating larger and is more conflicted than ever — but there are signs Australia is being left behind, according to social experts. 

The reality of life in 2025 is far broader, insecure and fragmented when compared to the first quarter of the last century, according to social analysts. 

The 20th century’s opening decades were dominated by a world war, groundbreaking inventions and social revolutions that fundamentally altered the way people lived.

By 1925, Australia was a newly-federated nation, decorated war hero Stanley Bruce was prime minister and the country’s GDP had spiked by 6.5 per cent.

Twenty-five years into the new millennium, demographers use “mega trends” to try to determine drivers of change that could impact people’s lives into the future.

Futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson told the ABC three major areas of focus are population changes, technological advancements, and global geopolitical shifts, as part of a “STEEP framework“, which also monitors economic and environmental factors.

Those three key drivers show the world is rapidly progressing, Mr Sorman-Nilsson said, but other experts say there is evidence major global powers could be repeating the turmoils of the past.

So, how far do these experts think we have we come?

The world is bigger than ever before

Over the course of the last century, the world grew in size more than ever before. In 1900, the global population was about 1.67 billion people and Australia was home to 3.8 million.

In 2025, the world’s population is almost 8.2 billion and Australia has grown to more than 26.8 million people.

Demographer Mark McCrindle told the ABC that while most of the developed world was grappling with population contraction due to a collapse in birth rates, Australia had “never added more people to our population as we have in the last two years”.

“In the last two decades, migration increased to be about 60 per cent of growth in an average year and natural increases was the other proportion — about 40 per cent,” he said.

“Migration is now up to 83 per cent of our growth … so, record population increases in Australia.”

Mr McCrindle said that the big difference in 2025 when compared to the start of the last century was that much of Asia now saw Australia as a desirable location to live and visit, and the country had been increasing its population mostly with skilled migrant workers and international students.

That trend could result in Australia’s population increasing to 50 million people by the 2050s, he said.

At the start of the 20th century, Australia’s migration was mostly from the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations.

Despite the recent boom, Mr McCrindle said Australia was not keeping up with a heightened population demand on critical infrastructure such as housing.

“The population growth is greater than the built environment growth and that’s really what’s driving the housing affordability challenges, that demand is exceeding supply,” he said.

“That imbalance is a new thing — we haven’t so much seen that, particularly in an era when migration was pretty small and stable a century ago.”

Mr McCrindle said he believed that failure would lead to the ratio of four-in-five Australians living in the country’s capital cities dramatically reducing over the next century as more people sought affordable lives in regional areas with flexible working conditions.

“The opportunity to move from what were the engine rooms of the economy — Sydney and Melbourne — and head to a more affordable place but keep the job is far more of an option than ever before,” he said.

Globally, the demographer predicted the population would grow as high as 10 billion by the 2080s, before stabilising.

He said the world was already experiencing increased rates of population contraction — meaning fewer people are being born annually — and this trend was likely to continue.

He also said that challenge would be faced primarily by the 2.1 billion “Generation Alpha” children born between 2010 and 2024, and their generational successors from 2025 to 2039 — Generation Beta.

“It was only about 50 years ago people were worried about overpopulation. In 50 years’ time, the challenge will be population contraction globally.

“Most [Generation Betas] will live into the 22nd century, many indeed still working in the 22nd century, so they’re the ones that are going to usher us into the period of time ahead, and coming at a time when there’s lots of change.”

The world’s next technology frontier

As the world grows in size, so does its technological and innovative capabilities.

From 1900, the world shifted with major inventions such as the first plane, the first tractor, the first talking motion picture, the creation of insulin, and the assembly line process along with the Model T Ford.

Mr Sorman-Nilsson said leading into 2025, the most groundbreaking invention reshaping the planet was artificial intelligence.

“We’ll have 100 years worth of exploration, discovery, advancement in the next 10 years courtesy of AI — this is massive,” he told the ABC .

Australia’s funding into research and development projects such as AI stood at at just 1.68 per cent of national GDP in 2022, which is far behind the spending of the US, Germany, Japan and South Korea.

The federal government’s 2024-25 May Budget revealed $21.6 million would be committed over five years to “Australia’s artificial intelligence (AI) expertise”.

Mr Sorman-Nilsson said in 2025, Australia is quickly being left behind the rest of the world.

“Fifty per cent of Aussies believe that AI tech is either useless or, at best, an occasional tool in the workplace,” he said.

“There’s definitely a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude amongst Australians.

“While we have this technological dawn and what I call a second renaissance of human creativity on our doorstep, Australians are not really grasping that opportunity with both hands.

“The Albanese government has forecast that AI can actually add $600 billion to the Australian economy every year for the next decade … that’s if Australians actually choose to adopt it.”

The futurist said for Australia to keep up, tangible examples should be shared to show how AI can simplify a person’s life or workflow.

“We need better storytellers, particularly in government and amongst business leaders, so that people actually go, ‘hey, let’s suspend our disbelief and actually start exploring how these new technologies will help boost our economy and our opportunities for work’.”

He also said that while SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants humans to land on Mars, there were more pressing challenges facing humanity on Earth in 2025.

“What you’ll see with climate change is that current cities that rank very highly on livability indexes, whether that be Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne … we’re going to get hit really, really hard,” Mr Sorman-Nilsson said.

“What you’ll see is a huge climate migration, this will be on an international level, but it also might redefine what is a liveable city.

“You’ll see new climate oases where people will move to, from certain parts of Australia to other parts of Australia that will be liveable in the future.

“The first thing before Mars exploration — which will be great for a few Silicon Valley billionaire and millionaires — [is that] we also need to look after our planet A and make sure that’s a sustainable and livable place for this next generation.”

Diplomacy, peace and the threat of World War III

As the world tackles technological advancements, wars are being waged in Ukraine and the Middle East and political tensions are growing in Asia and the Pacific.

Strategic Analysis Australia founder Michael Shoebridge said the world in 2025 appears to be repeating history.

Between 1900 and 1925, nations were built by cross-country trade on a backdrop of rises in populism and nationalism, World War I and social upheavals like the Russian Revolution, he said.

“Back then … there was a lot of population unhappiness with the way things were,” Mr Shoebridge told the ABC.

“In the early 1900s leading up to the first world war, there was an idea in several of the European powers that war might be an answer to their problems.

He said that, just like prior to World War I, the world in 2025 is witnessing a “revolution in warfare” with newly-innovated weaponry, and leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the United States president-elect Donald Trump blindly moving closer to a full-scale war.

“Just as with the European powers sleep-walking into the first world war, humans and governments aren’t all that good at remembering and applying the lessons of history,” Mr Shoebridge said.

“I think Russia’s Putin is in the middle of keeping on with that mistake, with his disastrously miscalculated war in Ukraine.

“Xi Jinping hasn’t learnt that lesson and he’s building a very powerful military with global force projection ability. He doesn’t seem to have learnt from Putin that maybe war doesn’t go the way that you think it will.”

The most powerful global players in World War I were the US, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Italy, Japan and Germany.

Mr Shoebridge said that a century later, those powers have shifted so the US, the European Union, Russia, India and China are now leading the world.

With changes to warfare and the global power hierarchy, Mr Shoebridge said there was a significant difference from last century that involved Australia.

“I think Australia is slightly less powerful than we were then. We were amongst the very richest populations on the planet at that time; we’re still wealthy but that’s not true anymore.

“Our partners and allies were the source of unrivalled technological advantage, both economically and militarily, and that’s not the case now.”

So, where does that leave Australia and the world in 2025?

“Whether it’s the UN or the World Trade Organization … patterns of diplomacy and international cooperation that the world forged after the two world wars to prevent future wars have lost a lot of their power now,” Mr Shoebrige said.

“We’ll see more fraying of international cooperation and much more informal and bloc-led cooperation, which is what we’re seeing with countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.