February. It’s that time of the year: people forget their NY’s resolutions, everyone’s back in the swing of things and data reports from the past 12 months start sliding into my inbox.

Here are some of my top 2018 report picks:

• Deloitte’s Media Consumer Survey 2018: The 7th edition of this report surveyed 2,000 Aussies on how they consume media. What did they find? Weirdly newspaper subscriptions in Australia went up last year – perhaps a sign of uncertain political times. 91% of surveyed Aussies admitted to multi-tasking while watching TV. Young or rich people were more likely to purchase a voice assistant. Music only accounted for 11% of the average Australian’s digital entertainment time. And people were more likely to be cool sharing data with companies if they can see and edit what is being collected (no shit, hey).

• We Are Social & Hootsuite’s Digital 2019 Australia Report: Australia had 18M active social media users, with 16M of those accessing it from their mobile devices. Using GlobalWebIndex data, users spent only an average of 47 minutes a day listening to music (I’d say this would be way higher for the average Bolster consumer though). Facebook and YouTube are now head-to-head, with both scoring at 79% for daily platform use. Oh yeah, and Pornhub was the 7th most visited site in Australia, with people clocking 10 minutes and 42 seconds on the website. Just so you know.

And now looking to the future. A lot of predicted trends for 2019 revolve around technology (specifically seamlessly fitting into our lives), wellness (bread 2.0 came up a few times) and ethics (environmentalism, sustainability, data privacy, corporate and individual responsibility).

• Shutterstock’s 2019 Creative Trends: a wrap of major trends right now (e.g. zine culture, which despite its very physical nature seems to be everywhere online), plus rising trends (like Kalamkari, a.k.a. Indian fabric painting). Also, elephants were the most searched stock photo in Australia? Go figure.

• Eventbrite’s The Pulse Report: The ticketing platform surveyed 4K event promoters worldwide, including 600 on home soil here in Aus. Almost half the participants are planning on running more events this year, and 36% will increase their marketing budgets. Interestingly, just over half the peeps surveyed also claimed that marketing/promo was their top expense last year. Challenges for this year are finding new attendees (*cough cough* oversaturated markets), low budgets and increased competition (*cough* I repeat, oversaturated markets). Eventbrite’s hot tips for tech trends this year include – mobile event apps, cashless payments and live streaming events. Key things the ticketing giant wants its clients to start thinking are environmental sustainability and data privacy (including ticketing fraud).

• 100 Pinterest trends for 2019: So what are people pinning this year? Oat milk, pegan diets (part paleo, part vegan), fashion bloggers in bike shorts, surprise destination holidays, sleep optimisation and body painting.

• The 2019 Topics & Trends Report from Facebook IQ: In a similar vein, Facebook also had a look at the conversations happening on Facebook to predict which trends are on the cusp of breaking through. People are talkin’ about micro-plastics, snakeskin prints, K-beauty, eco-products, sustainable fashion, smart TVs, all things horror (eep), ASMR, soul food, turmeric, Wu Wei (a Taoist concept of effortless action), self care and glamping.

• The Future 100: 2019 by JWT Intelligence: This one is juicy reading. It covers 100 trends and changes for the next year across categories like tech, travel, food & bev, beauty and lifestyle. Some of my faves include ‘woke luxury’, reframing masculinity, brand therapists, inclusive design, water connoisseurship, bread 2.0 and virtual influencers.

And lastly, let’s not forget The Simpsons. The true predictor of what’s to come.