7 Things Almost Everyone Agrees Should Probably Be Left In 2025
eldar nurkovic | Shutterstock We’re on the cusp of a new year, which means it’s time for resolutions, goals, and purposefully leaving some things in the past. Perhaps there are some personal things you want to move on from and never go back to, like that new shade you dyed your hair or the ex who won’t stop texting. But I think we can all agree that we, as a society, need to collectively leave some things in 2025.
Trends come and go almost faster than you can blink, so it feels like there’s always something new that everyone is into. Unfortunately, some trends feel like they overstay their welcome and just aren’t fun anymore. One Redditor asked fellow users what trends they could not imagine taking into 2026, and their answers were pretty spot-on. From viral social media moments to new technology, there are some things that pretty much everyone is over by now.
Here are 7 things almost everyone agrees should probably be left in 2025:
1. Needing an app for everything
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One person lamented the fact that there are some “simple electronic products that require you to download an app in order to use them.” That kind of erases the whole point of them being simple products, of course. I mean, what really is the purpose of downloading an app so your kid’s LeapFrog reading tool will work?
Adding onto this idea, someone else mentioned the need to always have a specific app to park in a specific place. Thankfully, some parking lots and garages just let you scan a QR code and enter your payment information, but others take it to another level, requiring you to download their unique app to pay. It’s a hassle for sure.
And, while we’re on this subject, what about the fact that you need an app for pretty much every store and restaurant now if you want to get discounts or check the status of an order? It’s all becoming too much. No one has that much space on their phone.
2. Watching commercials on a streaming service you pay for
The idea of streaming services was really cool … at least in the beginning. You could pay for a service that you knew had shows and movies you actually wanted to watch, and you didn’t even have to watch commercials when you did it. Over time, things have changed. Now, if you want to pay a reasonable price for those streaming services, you have to choose a plan with ads. As Redditors pointed out, it’s really no different than cable.
Taking a look at the different plans Netflix offers is pretty shocking. Their cheapest option is “Standard with ads,” which costs $7.99 a month. If you want to go ad-free, you have to pay an entire $10 more for the “Standard” plan. This system has absolutely spiraled out of control.
3. Having to pay for a subscription to buy something
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“Why does everything need to be a subscription?” someone asked. “I just want to buy a product once. I don’t need to receive it every month for the rest of my life!” Ordering a specialty candle may sound like a pretty good idea until you find out you have to opt into the candle of the month club.
What’s even more frustrating is needing to set up a subscription with a particular retailer to order from them. Walmart makes it nearly impossible to order online without being a Walmart+ member. An FTC lawsuit even made the news recently after it was decided that Amazon had to pay customers $2.5 billion in refunds because they “allegedly enrolled tens of millions of customers in Amazon Prime subscriptions without their knowledge or consent.”
4. Inescapable influencer culture
To say we’re going to leave influencers behind in 2025 altogether may be impossible, but there are some things people are sick of. One person mentioned videos in which an influencer invites viewers to try a viral product with them. Someone else brought up starting every video with “POV,” short for point of view. “It’s not even close to a point of view,” they argued.
This should be no problem for influencers, though. They are nothing if not adaptable and adept at figuring out what their audience wants. If these videos keep performing well, they’ll keep making them; if engagement starts to decline, they’ll pivot to something else.
5. Hearing about AI constantly
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Now, this is one I can get behind. It feels like all we ever hear about anymore, whether it’s on the news, social media, or even at work, is AI and the great advancements it’s making. A lot of people have made AI a part of their routine and hacked how to make their lives easier because of it, but other people are pretty against it and worried about how fast it’s evolving.
A Pew Research Center survey found that 95% of American adults have heard of AI, making it one of the most pervasive topics to take over the national and global conversation in a while. Interestingly, 50% of respondents also said they were “more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” We can’t really stop the AI boom at this point, but it sounds like a lot of people would like to slow it down.
6. Having phone conversations on speaker in public
There are few things as annoying as just going about your business, buying groceries, or taking a walk in the park, when you come across someone whose entire conversation you can overhear, all because they’re having it on speaker phone. Similar to this is the way that everyone seems to have suddenly forgotten their headphones and earbuds at home and watches videos at full volume in public.
Some people just prefer using speakerphone, but there’s a time and place to do so, just like sitting in a crowded lobby is probably not the best time to scroll through TikTok without headphones. We’ve got to be aware of other people and practice common courtesy, after all.
7. Trusting people with no credentials
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One Reddit user referred to this phenomenon as “anti-intellectualism.” They defined it as “the trend of not listening to experts in their respective fields. Not searching out facts and raw data. Amplifying opinions of people not qualified to have meaningful opinions.” This has really become a bigger issue as more and more people are getting their news from social media, meaning it’s being posted by people who have no expertise on the subject and aren’t even journalists.
In a study published in PLOS One, researchers concluded that the choice to turn to and trust an expert can be termed “epistemic trustworthiness.” For us to consider an expert as having a high level of epistemic trustworthiness, they not only need expertise, but also integrity and benevolence. Dr. Julia Shaw, who reported on the study for The Independent, noted, “In other words, knowing stuff isn’t enough. For us to rate a person as a trustworthy expert, they need to know their information, to be honest, and to be good-hearted.”
This is concerning. It makes sense that you would want someone to be knowledgeable and honest to take their expert opinion seriously, but, simply put, not everyone is nice. Should that really play a role in whether or not we trust someone? Should we put how nice someone seems over any actual credentials they may have? It’s a slippery slope.
There are some things that we can’t simply get rid of, no matter how much they annoy us. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some trends that we really don’t need to carry with us into the new year. Whether it’s something as harmless as the way people format their social media videos, or something more serious like who we trust as an expert, the world is just ready to make them a thing of the past in 2026.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
