We’re all done for – or so the algorithms would have us think. But, says Rachel Kelly, there is evidence of hope out there

I blame us hacks. Journalists naturally are drawn to bad news. And online algorithms have only heightened this tendency, feeding us tales of doom and gloom. So much so that youngsters in particular are convinced the world is going to hell in a handcart. The world, they believe, is getting poorer, more dangerous, less democratic and with less of a regard for truth.

And it’s affecting their mental wellbeing. A UNICEF study last June found that 60 per cent of people aged between 14 and 25 feel overwhelmed by current events, especially stories of conflict and climate change. People are vulnerable to the negative stuff. And catastrophic thinking can quickly become self-fulfilling.

But what if such negativity is misguided? What if the exact opposite is true? That the world is now more prosperous, peaceful, representative, and honest than it was in our parents’ time? Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and a bit of a hero of mine, certainly thinks so.

His 2025 Orwell lecture, delivered in London at the end of 2025, was wonderfully optimistic. And convincing too, because Pinker focused on data rather than hyperbole; and on sweeping developments rather than the at times short and negative time horizon of journalists. No hack he.

Let’s begin with whether we’re getting richer. A good source is the online publication Our World in Data, which covers research on the world’s problems and is partly run by Oxford University. It found that in 1948, GDP per capita in the UK was less than $11,000; by 1984, it had doubled to $22,000; as of 2022 it had almost doubled again to about $40,000 (all figures adjusted for inflation). Global GDP more broadly has increased nearly sixfold: extreme poverty now affects less than a tenth of the world’s population, compared to three quarters in 1948.

Next, are we becoming more peaceful?  Pinker thinks so.  “The number of wars that have taken place in western Europe since 1946 is zero,” he writes. “The number of wars between great powers is one, namely the Korean War which pitted China against the US more than 70 years ago. The number of nuclear weapons deployed in war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been zero”. Despite wars in Ukraine, Gaza and east Africa, the number of battle deaths has also fallen, albeit unevenly, according to the Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

The balance sheet on whether democracy is in retreat is more mixed. Between 1948 and 1984 Spain, Portugal, Greece and Argentina all threw off their dictators. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Soviet Union began to unravel. But as the historian Anne Applebaum and others have argued, autocracy is on the rise again, particularly in Russia and Hungary, and some would say in America too.

But overall, Pinker reminds us, although global democracy scores have declined slightly in recent years, they remain higher than at any time except for the last years of the 20th century.

Finally, what of our regard for truth? It’s easy to be concerned given politicians’ lies and euphemisms, as well as the rise of cancel culture and fake news. Many claim we live in a post-truth era. Yet conspiracy theories have persisted for decades, casting doubt on whether a distinct “truth era” ever existed. A study by political scientists Joseph E Uscinski and Joseph M Parent, which looked at more than 100,000 letters to the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, spanning from 1890 to 2010, found that the level of conspiratorial content has been remarkably stable over time.

And fears of disinformation need to be balanced with the expansion of global knowledge: there are now more pages in works such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica than there have ever been, while Wikipedia (despite its errors) has added to our cumulative knowledge too. Scientific frontiers keep expanding, from our discovery of the structure of DNA to evidence for black holes. In recent years, innovations such as the Internet, space travel, organ transplants, smartphones, and vaccines have emerged, witnessed by the accelerating pace of the number of American patents. We may just come up with answers to global warming too.

Pinker concludes that if we study the evidence on prosperity, peace, democracy and disinformation, humanity is winning. “For all its flaws and stains and crookedness, (human nature) includes capacities for sympathy, for justice, for knowledge and for truth,” he writes.

It’s a sentence to share with anyone who’s feeling wobbly about the state of the world, especially anyone young in your life. There are many approaches to good mental health, but having a sense of perspective and an understanding of history are two of them. We do well to widen our gaze and be grateful for how, despite everything, we’re progressing.  Oh, and watch which journalists you read. You could do worse than limit your media diet to your very own Idler correspondent.

Rachel Kelly’s latest book is The Gift of Teenagers: Connect More, Worry Less (Hachette).

This article is from Idler #109.

Rachel also presents the Idler Academy course Nurturing Body & Soul: How to Cop with Six of Life’s Biggest Challenges.

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