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Emerging technology may be this era's existential crisis, as many people feel a loss of autonomy.

Much like the anxiety of the Cold War era, the AI era has produced a societal sense of worry.

Counterbalancing worry with optimism can help navigate the uncertainties of advancing technology.

In a May 2026 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, more than half of the participants identified “the impact of emerging technology in everyday life” as an issue they were somewhat or very anxious about (APA, 2026). The seemingly unstoppable emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be driving this rise in tech-related anxiety, so much so that recently a new psychological concept, “AI Anxiety,” has begun to appear in scholarly articles and research. Advancing technology, which was once viewed as a mainly positive development that could improve our lives, is beginning to be seen more as an existential threat that could lead to our downfall. According to the Pew Research Center, concern about AI now heavily outweighs excitement, with a jump from 31% of respondents feeling concerned to 55% since 2021 (McClain & Park, 2026).

Evolving Societal Concerns

Over time, societal concerns evolve and change, and our collective psychology evolves along with these broader changes. For example, in psychology texts from the midcentury, worries about the Cold War, nuclear annihilation, and the atomic bomb were often referenced as the main anxieties of the period. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “the political and military tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union fostered a profound anxiety in our nation during the 1950s,” driven by “the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945…[and] the horrors of nuclear warfare” (Moore & Moore, 2009). While there remains an underlying societal anxiety about war and nuclear capability, these........

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