Kids from the 1960s imagine life in the year 2000, their predictions are eerily accurate

Editor's note: This article was originally published on December 6, 2022. It has since been updated.

Kids aren't often seen as intuitive, but a clip from 1966 might change your mind. It shows children from that era making predictions about life in the year 2000. Amazingly, many of their insights have proven accurate.

A segment from the video—which originally aired on December 28, 1966, as part of BBC's Tomorrow's World—was shared on Twitter, where it gained over 1.4 million views and more than 40,000 likes.

The 40-second-long clip starts with a boy saying, "People will be regarded more as statistics than as actual people." A girl then offered her opinion: "I don't think it's going to be so nice. I think, sort of, all machines everywhere, everyone doing everything for you. You know, you'll get all bored and I don't think it will be so nice."

Another young girl then appears and talks about how work would be scarce for people. "First of all, these computers are taking over now. Computers and automation and in the year 2000, there won't be enough jobs to go around and the only jobs there will be, it will be for people with high IQ and those who work computers and such things," she said.

Twitter users were stunned to hear the children's opinions. One said, "So prescient. So right. Wonder if these people are alive now, and how they feel about being right." Another wrote, "There's no way this is real is it really? A child knew about computers in the 60s? Something that took up three or four buildings to pretty much do what we can do with a singing birthday card. It's a little too spot on when she's talking about the computers That's all I'm saying." Another said, "Those aren't children. They're prophets. Wow. Such insight!"

BBC Archive posted a longer version of the video on YouTube in December 2021 with the caption: "Pupils from Marlborough college, Roedean and Chippenham schools predict what life will be like for them in the year 2000. With concerns ranging from nuclear armageddon, overpopulation, automation, battery farming and mass unemployment, it's fair to say that most of them aren't especially optimistic about the prospect."

In a similar story, Rosa Beckerton and her husband Peter found a letter written by an 11-year-old on February 23, 1969, while they were refurbishing their sofa. The writer imagines herself as a married bank worker. It reads: "Hello, dear,' he said to me. 'I've just got to ring up my friend on the telephone.' 'Well you'd better tidy yourself up a bit,' I said. In 1969, the telephone was a square box thing with a resiver [sic] on top of it. But now it is still a resiver [sic], but you can see the people you are talking to, for there is a screen where you can see the people. It is a bit like a television." The girl had predicted technological changes like video calling. 

The couple made the letter public in the hopes of finding the girl who actually wrote the letter. Rosa said, "When my husband showed it to me I couldn’t believe it. I thought oh my god, look at this. It was just so interesting because looking at it today she’s got a lot of her predictions kind of right, but in her childish innocent way she thought it would all happen in ten years."