What's Next, Now: April 2025
This month, our crystal ball predicts another breakout year for Reddit, a moment of reckoning for doctors, the end of job hopping for a quick raise, and more.
In the wake of X’s decline, Reddit is making its case. At a time when authenticity feels more like a rarity than the norm, Reddit has carved out a space for raw conversations, credible crowdsourced insights, and unfiltered opinions. Because of user anonymity, the platform has become a space that provides an outlet for users to discuss a whole range of topics, without the fear of people you know listening in.
Evolving from its gossip-rag, 4chan-adjacent roots, recent years have re-shaped Reddit to be more helpful than hurtful. More recently, Reddit has served as a vital space for federal workers navigating uncertainty around their job status, offering community and clarity amid an evolving national conversation. Journalists are tapping into Reddit for leads and sources, and even Hollywood is taking cues from the platform, with Warner Bros. recently announcing the move to adapt a Reddit-originated story into a film starring Sydney Sweeney.
This evolving reputation hasn’t gone unnoticed by brands. According to a recent EMARKETER report, Reddit is now seeing the fastest ad revenue growth of any major social media platform. Reddit thrives on honesty, community-driven moderation, and transparency — qualities that consumers and brands alike are beginning to value more than ever. For many, Reddit is stepping in where traditional institutions are falling short. As trust in legacy media erodes, especially with the rise of AI-generated content, users are turning to Reddit for information they can cross-check and evaluate on their own.
Although the platform has been around for 20 years, the last few years have made Reddit as popular as leading social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. After the 2021 “meme stock” incident, when Reddit users famously sent the value of GameStop and AMC shares soaring, its cultural influence became impossible to ignore. Reddit experienced its most significant user growth between 2023 and 2024. Now, its influence is poised to keep growing as communities increasingly turn to the platform for real-time advice, answers, and connection.
All signs point to Reddit having yet another strong year in 2025. With an expanding user base, growing advertiser interest, and content that naturally travels across platforms, Reddit is becoming a unique and timely space for brands to engage with audiences in authentic, creative ways.
No thoughts, just vibes. That’s the new motto for the coding world.
Generative AI has been promising to revolutionize coding and software development since it first burst out onto the scene. It seems to be making good on that promise: Google claims more than a quarter of their new code is written by AI. Now, a new term has entered the programmers’ dictionary: vibecoding. Popularized by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, vibecoding refers to the way AI tools can democratize the coding experience. Rather than manually crafting code, you can start with a vibe — or an idea of what you want your software to do — and ask the AI to do the rest. With vibecoding, no previous coding experience is required.
But the ability to create a fully customized app or software with no actual coding expertise can come with consequences. Research from GitClear, a coding quality measurement tool, suggests that AI-generated code is leading to increasing duplicated and copy/pasted code, signs of eroded quality. Another study found that, while AI was capable of handling smaller coding tasks, larger changes were “slower and more prone to creating instability.”
Chair of the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard (and Tier One client) Karim Lakhani is often attributed with the quote, “AI won’t replace humans, but humans with AI will replace humans without AI.” In the coding world, this evolution is inevitable. As the AI revolution rolls on, it will no longer be enough to just have coding experience. But just being able to wrangle an AI tool isn’t quite the answer either. Organizations that value efficient and accurate work will look for tech talent with a hybrid of AI expertise (to accelerate and automate development) and coding know-how (to direct and double check AI-generated work).
Even AI agrees — reportedly, code generator Cursor recently told a user, “you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly."
When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck, doctors and frontline workers became the heroes we relied on for guidance. They were the trusted experts, the steady hands in a world turned upside down. But fast forward a few years, and something has shifted — trust in doctors and hospitals is rapidly declining.
The reasons behind this growing lack of trust are multifaceted. It’s the rushed appointments, the feeling of being unheard, and the systemic biases that have left many patients frustrated. For example, female patients often report feeling dismissed or ignored when discussing both their physical and mental health concerns. Research has shown that women who visit the emergency room with severe chest pain are forced to wait nearly 29% longer than men with the same symptoms. The problem is even more pronounced for Black women, with more than 70% reporting negative interactions with healthcare providers, including having their pain dismissed or needing to advocate for themselves to receive proper care.
As the medical community struggles to address these issues, patients are increasingly taking their health matters into their own hands. Many are turning to online resources to diagnose their symptoms, relying on Google and online forums (like aforementioned Reddit!) to give their concerns the attention they feel they deserve. Even healthcare professionals are starting to turn to digital tools. Recently, a nurse shared her experience of how her Oura Ring encouraged her to take her symptoms more seriously, which led to a cancer diagnosis that may have otherwise gone undetected.
Unlike physicians who are sometimes short-staffed or being pulled in many directions, technology doesn’t have to face an onslaught of distractions. It doesn’t brush off concerns. It listens, analyzes, and provides insights without bias. In some cases, AI can even be more empathetic and less accusatory compared to its human counterparts. Of course, AI will never be a replacement for human doctors, but it’s clear people are searching for healthcare experiences that feel more personal — even if it’s coming from a machine.
For years, job hopping has been the golden ticket to bigger paychecks — especially among younger generations — with job hoppers often seeing nearly double the salary increase than long-tenured employees. But the once-reliable strategy of jumping ship for more money is starting to lose its edge.
In the past, changing jobs was almost a guaranteed way to land a significant raise. Now? Job hoppers should look before they leap. The median pay bump for changing jobs dropped to just 4.8% last month, down from a high of 7.7% in early 2023. What’s more, the gap between salary growth for those who stay and those who move has virtually closed. The difference stands at only 0.2%, compared to 2.2% at its peak.
What gives? Blame it on a cooling job market. Layoffs have flooded the talent pool, making competition fiercer than ever. Employers are calling the shots, knowing they have a sea of qualified candidates at their fingertips. And let’s not forget the return-to-office wave. Companies aren’t as eager to jump through hoops for employees demanding remote work or flexible schedules.
In short, the days of job hopping for easy pay raises are fading fast. But that doesn’t mean workers are settling down.
Even in an employer’s market, employee loyalty is still hard to come by. Only 23% of workers under 42 express strong interest in sticking around long-term, and that number drops to just 18% for those under 30. Unsurprisingly, over half of U.S. workers are watching for or actively seeking new opportunities.
For employers, the message is clear: Offering competitive salaries, raises, and comprehensive benefits is essential not only for attracting talent, but also for retaining top performers and fostering a culture of commitment. In a shifting job market, the companies that invest in their people will be the ones that come out on top.
We’re experiencing a first here at What’s Next, Now this month, as the concept of a trend itself is trending! The New York Times recently published a story about how social media, especially TikTok, has ushered in a time when we are continuously inundated with “trends.” With more than a third of TikTok users belonging to Gen Z — and younger generations often driving cultural trends — reporter Callie Holtermann set out to uncover which trends truly resonate with Gen Z. However, her story took a surprising turn: “Many wanted to talk not about any one trend that they thought mattered, but about their struggles with the relentless onslaught of trends, and the whiplash they felt from trying to process them all so quickly.”
While Holtermann’s article focuses primarily on fashion and lifestyle trends, the sentiment is true across all trends as of late. It can feel impossible to keep up and determine which trends are meaningful to your life or business — which is why we created What’s Next, Now in the first place. It also brings up the age-old question of “is it a trend or a fad?” Our stance is that many of the so-called “trends” that explode on social media are actually just fads: a short-lived craze that becomes popular quickly and fades just as fast, usually in a few weeks or months.
The constant surge of trends shows no sign of slowing. Soon, Gen Alpha will take the torch from Gen Z as trend leaders. This generation is unique, not only for being born fully into the digital era, but also for being raised largely by millennial parents. Three in four millennials report they’ll try to keep their kids off social media for as long as possible. With that skepticism in mind, we wonder, will Gen Alpha hop on the trend bandwagon, or take a more intentional and perhaps even resistant approach to the ever-accelerating churn of online culture?
While looking ahead is our speciality, sometimes we like to take a look back, too. How did our trend predictions fare in Q1? Find out.
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Want to hear more? Explore the Tier One blog, TOP TALK, for the latest digital marketing trends, tips, and insights.
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