63 Examples of Modern Life

John Spacey, April 11, 2023

Modern life describes how people live now as compared to historical periods that precede the modern age. Technically speaking, the modern-era began as early as 1500. As life now has almost nothing in common with life in 1500, a more practical definition of modern life would be the lives of people living today whereby people can live one hundred years or more. The following are broad trends in life over the past century.

Access to advanced technology	Access to diverse cultural activities and experiences
Access to sanitation	Automobile culture – world filled with roads and cities expanded outwards
Biotechnology	Changing social values
Chemical industry – vast array of chemical products developed	Climate change
Consumer culture – fulfilling needs by buying products or services	Convenience culture – common to have products delivered to the door
Creative culture - pursuit of creative hobbies such as diy and professions such as design	Culture such as film, sport, music and fashion that operates at a global level
Cybercrime	DNA sequencing
Digital banking, payments and currency	Ecommerce
Economic competition that is often at a global level with less protectionism	Environmental issues such as poor air quality
Extended life expectancy	Extended public transportation systems
Genetically modified organisms	Global communication systems
Global data connectivity	Greater access to food options
Greater economic stability	Greater gender equality
Greater racial and ethnic diversity and inclusion	High productivity rates
High rate of social progress	High rate of technological change
Higher GDP per capita	Improved standard of living
Information age – widespread access to copious information	Internet age
Knowledge economy	Large number of subcultures based on things like lifestyle, hobbies and aesthetics
Large number of professions and career paths	Lifelong learning required to keep up with change
Longtail – ability for anyone to compete with professionals using technology	Mass production
Medical advancements	Misinformation – issues such as fake news
Mixed reality	More diverse industries, professions and economic activity
More extensive public health programs and initiatives	More leisure time
More stable and diverse financial markets	Nuclear age – capacity for nations to destroy the world
Online bullying	Relatively open markets
Service economy - a shift towards services and away from products	Smartphones – widespread access to computing from anywhere
Social media – global conversation 24/7	Space exploration
Streaming media – access to huge catalogs of music, film and entertainment on demand	Stronger social safety nets
Student debt	Surveillance technology
Transportation revolution – widespread access to global travel	Urbanization
Video games	Virtual worlds
Working from home

The list above takes a slightly positive view because we have listed modern issues separately here.

Generally speaking, people tend to have a negative view of modern life but if you compare to say 100 years ago -- most things have improved quite a bit on a global basis. For example, global life expectancy was around 35 years in 1923 and around 73.16 years in 2023. If you take a long view at the scale of centuries, the trend is clear that all or almost all nations have made progress towards a higher quality of life.