This study explores how widespread synthetic content and bot activity may reshape human experiences and interactions across digital and physical environments, over the next 5–10 years. Using a neo-ecological systems framework that extends Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model into digital contexts, the study organizes challenges across interconnected domains, from trust formation and knowledge acquisition at the micro level across to governance and policy at the macro level. Drawing on a State of the Art (SoTA) literature review and expert interviews across a spectrum of fields, the analysis employs Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) to identify emerging disruptions. Experts highlight how increasingly sophisticated synthetic entities undermine existing verification systems, distort credibility signals, outpace current governance frameworks and even threaten our shared and private epistemologies. These insights inform the foresight inquiry that follows, applying the scenario planning method through a 2x2 matrix. Structured around ten systemic change drivers, the scenarios explore four divergent futures illustrating distinct trajectories through which these challenges may unfold. This inquiry offers a set of system-level recommendations that span microsystem to macrosystem interventions, including social, technical, and policy responses. Framed in light of the “Dead Internet Theory”, a once-fringe conspiracy now gaining plausibility amid the rapid proliferation of AI-driven bots, this research suggests that the mechanisms through which we establish our realities are being systematically manipulated by synthetic entities and those who deploy them, presenting a palpable, urgent and existential challenge.