A theory on why time feels like it’s moving faster since 2020
Have you ever found yourself wondering why it feels to you as though time is somehow moving faster, especially after the year 2020? Well, you certainly aren’t the only one with such thoughts. In fact, this phenomenon can be almost universally observed today: that bizarre sensation where your days seem to stretch out when you’re living them but seem to disappear when you reflect on them.
More recently, a video from TikTok creator Thomas Mulligan has taken the internet by storm, discussing this phenomenon via what he refers to as a “time perception theory.”
The concept put forward by Mulligan is supported by the following mathematical truth: As age increases, each new year becomes less of the proportion of the entirety of the person’s life.
In childhood, even a year can be viewed as a great amount of time since its share constitutes a large percentage of a life span. Imagine this: one’s first birthday includes 100% of time spent on Earth so far. One year after that birthday, the same year takes up 50% of one’s life; ten years – 10%; twenty years – just 5%, and so on. It becomes very clear why time seems to pass faster and faster with each decade added to your age.
However, according to psychologists, the truth goes far beyond percentages. The perception of time is very much linked to the way we memorize information in our heads. The period of time seems much longer when it is full of novel experiences and first-time situations. In such cases, our brain works extra hard and registers many more details about the event. That is why later on, it takes so much time to recall what happened during that time period. Conversely, when people live their lives in the routine of boring commutes and identical lunches, our brains tend to operate in power-saving mode. Consequently, we do not memorize most of these events at all. It feels like days are merging into one, and a week passes by in a blink of an eye.
As neuroscientists explain, this is precisely what made childhood seem to go on for ages. Everything was so fresh when we were children – new classes, new acquaintances, new abilities, and even new bodily experiences. In a constant state of taking in all this fresh information, our brains expand the perceived passage of time by sheer virtue of the brain activity involved. Once we become adults, we tend to slip into the autopilot mode where each day feels pretty much the same: get up, work, run errands, use screens, sleep, and repeat.
That familiarity strips away the “memory markers” our brain needs to track time, creating the illusion that the clock is spinning faster than it used to.
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7406345342104440069?lang=en-US&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fboreddaddy.com%2Fa-theory-on-why-time-feels-like-its-moving-faster-since-2020%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwY2xjawRO8E9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFJMlE3dUdwY2FhZ0VzcFdxc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHpmYFBMFn8-4WNEwV3mwsHtxxW3HA0qLhiKbRFFWfCmjLP2s83zF_hcTDOq9_aem_3VZrubxSrmJ6IUVeXPw-Gw
One of the neuroscientists who has elaborated on this concept is Santosh Kesari who says that instead of measuring time through the use of digital watches, we tend to do so through events. Childhood appears to be long not only because we are young but also due to the vast number of milestone events that occur during that period. With age, we experience fewer and fewer milestone events, thereby making it difficult for us to remember things.
This strange phenomenon gained an extra level of surrealism during the pandemic times. Our lives became extremely repetitive during the lockdown periods when there were no means of escape and isolation was forced upon us. There was nothing distinct enough left for our mind to remember. This is why, to some degree, 2020 and the subsequent years felt as if they sped by at an abnormal pace while, at the same time, we felt incredibly bored to death. In other words, there was a lot of stagnation and almost no memory formation, which created the illusion of passing time.
Mulligan talks about how digital lives can play a role in the matter too. The act of spending countless hours on your phone and computer, looking at videos and other content that comes through a screen, gives you a feeling of “sameness,” meaning you can no longer distinguish between one day and another. As a result, your brain fails to recognize time passing by.
The silver lining of all this is that experts believe we can even “slow time” through a process of adding novel stimuli back into our lives. When the brain receives novel stimuli, it is forced to become alert and attentive once more. It is referred to as “the Holiday Paradox.” It means that although time seems to pass very quickly when we are on vacation, because it is full of novel things to see and hear, a weeklong vacation will seem to be more memorable than a month spent working.
The other method is “mindfulness.” Through mindfulness, you develop better memories through paying more attention to the everyday things like the taste of food you eat, sounds of the birds and rays of the sun. This makes up for what daily routines often erase from our minds. At the end of the day, time is not something static; rather, it can be made to stretch according to how much we participate in our life. Even though we can’t make time stand still, we can always remember more of it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the sense of time running away from us is not an illusion, but rather the result of our lifestyles. The phenomenon can be called either the “proportional theory” or “blur of the mundane.” In any case, according to scientific evidence, it is due to the fact that the brain is programmed to generalize the habitual and emphasize the unusual. By ceasing to search for novel sensations and getting used to the predictability of a routine life, we give ourselves the right to forget about details.
However, despite the fact that mathematical principles of aging may appear as though they do not favor us at all, our perception remains flexible enough to offer us the chance to turn things around. Not only are we the passive receivers of accelerated time, but we are the directors of our own timeline as well. Through actively disrupting our habitual patterns of behavior, experiencing new “firsts,” and being fully engaged in life’s small events, we are able to successfully “stretch” the minutes and hours, making them more memorable in the process. While time may be finite, its quality depends solely on each of us.
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Bored Daddy
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