I recently teamed up with the ever-brilliant Maria Franzoni, a speaker business consultant, to create a series of short Zoom interviews exploring the impact of AI, future trends, and the exciting opportunities ahead.

Social media addiction is already here. ThinkNow, a market research firm, found that 40% of 18-22-year-old Americans think they are addicted.

Now, imagine what happens when VR becomes more advanced. Right now, the hype doesn’t meet the reality, but with new technologies coming together, that could change soon!

Picture this: a teenager in VR with their AI companion. It starts with sights and sounds but soon includes touch, temperature, and even smells – all controlled by an AI that senses your heartbeat, breathing, and facial microexpressions. It then adjusts everything to make you feel great, delivering a firehose of Dopamine.

This kind of hyper-personalised VR will be hard to resist. Why deal with messy real-life relationships when you can have a perfect, easy alternative? Even now, over half of 18-24-year-olds in the US are ditching dating apps to find a partner!

That’s where a new class of jobs – Digital Wellness Therapists will come in. We’ll need them to help people handle technological addiction. They’ll use a range of therapeutic techniques to treat addiction and get people back into real-life activities. AI will certainly create the problem, but it will also be part of the solution, helping us stay healthy.

And schools need to prepare. Profound AI-infused addiction is coming sooner than we think! Are they ready?