As 2023 draws to a close, Designit’s Dr Pardis Shafafi, anthropologist and Global Responsible Business Lead at Designit is looking to 2024 - here are her three business predictions for the year ahead:

1. 2024 - The year of reckoning for social media giants

“In Jennifer Egan’s ‘The Candy House’ (2022), the author compares the allure of handing out our personal data for a dopamine hit of accessing everyone else’s, to the fate of Hansel and Gretel. It, in many ways, echoes the relationship that we have with social media…

“2024 will be a year of reckoning for our decades-long unfettered exchange of information with social media giants. As in Egan’s novel, 2024 will see a rise in new ways of thinking about our data and interactions with social media. There will be an increase in those who choose to live a life away from its trappings completely.

“Our collective and generational awakening to a sense of data sanctity will have huge consequences that will ripple across industries and will question the inevitability of our digitised lives.”

2. The beginning of the end for greenwashing

“2024 will see consumers continue to vote with their wallets when it comes to ethical practices. But contrary to the sustainability consumer trends of a decade ago, these will be harder to mitigate with superficial marketing efforts. Why? Because the critics are not just the customers anymore, but the ones who are designing, making, marketing and selling the products as well.

“This could make the beginning of the end for greenwashing practices.

“2024’s cohorts of designers, creators and makers are going to have been trained in critical approaches to their disciplines, including Do No Harm, decolonial approaches, and sustainable design. They will have a more human, environmental and ethical approach to the world, meaning that the products and services that are being released have responsibility at their core.

“This could mark the end to the greenwashing chapter and finally encourage meaningful steps towards sustainability.”

3. AI discussions will be introspective rather than dystopian

“While 2023 saw dystopian narratives of future applications of artificial intelligence running wild on our feeds, 2024 will be where the narrative around AI will shift to a more everyday level.

“Instead of the apocalypse, we will be observing the existing ways that these technologies are embedded into our lives (and how they have both benefited and harmed us) all while examining them through a sustainability and philosophical lens. We will move away from ‘robots taking over the world’ takes, and instead ask questions like ‘is deferring to AI for everyday tasks worth the harm it does to the environment?’ for example.”