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Noema ·For the curious

Your Perception of Time is, in Fact, Warped

by Mike Mariani

Published 2026-09-03 16:29:42+00:00

If time is measured in memories, what happens to a day spent staring at a screen?

0:00 / 30:52 · Narrator Algieba

Context

Everyone from teenagers to retirees is complaining that the years are suddenly moving too fast. Writing on 3 September 2026, Mike Mariani treats this collective dizzy spell as a genuine breakdown of our internal clocks. He tracks how the pandemic first scrambled our sense of duration, and how the endless scroll of digital life keeps the dial spinning. The underlying question is entirely practical. If the human brain needs empty, boring moments to build lasting memories, what happens to our past when we fill every quiet second with a glowing screen?

Show notes

An overview of why time seems to move faster now than it did before the pandemic, drawing on historical psychology and recent studies of digital habits. The text explains how constant screen use speeds up our immediate sense of time while blocking the memory formation that makes the past feel long. Reversing this effect requires breaking the habit of filling every idle moment and relearning how to be bored.

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