Granted. Virtual reality and augmented reality technology quickly becomes extremely cheap to buy and easy to acquire. Soon, cybernetic implants become available so that a person doesn’t even need a headset to experience virtual reality.
Within a few years, the implants are commonplace and easy to acquire all over the world. Children are implanted from a young age.
Because virtual reality provides such a strong dopamine hit, people stop trying to live their lives in the real world. Every single person starts to live fantasy worlds in virtual reality. And everyone is very happy.
The birth rate plummets, and within a couple generations no new humans are born.
Granted, all children will watch their parent’s lives get worse over time, in every way possible, and will be powerless to stop it, until they realize how horrible their parents’ lives truly were.
Well that’s fucking terrifying. I’m imagining almost some pandemic dementia targeting mainly adults, forcing each generation to watch their parents suffer more horribly than the last, with the cure magically guaranteed to never be found.
Wish Granted.
Very few children are born. The few that are quickly build up massive wealth worsening the conditions of their pare ts generation. Very quickly no more children are born as they would not have a better quality of life. The human race dies out within a couple of generations.
