When Did We Stop Asking Why?

In an age of instant answers, the slow disappearance of deep curiosity might be our quietest loss

Question: What has quietly disappeared from society over the past 30 years without people noticing?

Curiosity.

Not the surface-level type that scrolls through trivia or watches a conspiracy video on YouTube. But real, deep, soul-stirring curiosity—the kind that once made people sit quietly with questions instead of sprinting toward the fastest answer. It’s the kind of curiosity that bred patience, wonder, exploration. The kind that asked why, what if, and how come, without needing a notification ding or a Google search to satisfy it instantly.

Thirty years ago, a child might stare at the stars and wonder for hours what was out there. Now, the answer is one tap away—and with it, the mystery dissolves before it has time to deepen into something meaningful.

What vanished was the willingness to not know for a while.

In a world designed to keep us plugged in, busy, informed, and entertained at all times, we’ve forgotten how to sit in the empty spaces. Curiosity once demanded stillness, not stimulation. It required looking inward as much as outward. It asked us to follow threads with no promise of reward—just the thrill of discovering something new about the world, or ourselves.

We’ve traded that for convenience. And while we’ve gained an incredible amount of access to knowledge, we may have lost our appetite for understanding.

Without curiosity, we’re left with a society that knows too much and feels too little. We consume, but we don’t wonder. We answer, but we don’t ask. We react, but we don’t reflect.

The good news is: it’s not gone forever. Curiosity is a quiet thing. It doesn’t die. It hides beneath the noise, waiting for the moment we decide to pause, to look longer, to ask again—not because we want an answer, but because we want to care enough to search.

Try it.

Turn off the screen. Look up. Look within. Let something mystify you again. Let a question go unanswered—for now. That’s where life used to live. It still does. If you remember how to find it.