The Perception of Time in a Rapidly Changing World
Lisa Maynard-Atem, 47, finds it hard to remember what she had for breakfast three days ago, let alone what happened last year. As we move further into 2025, the world has experienced numerous significant events, from global tensions and extreme weather to political shifts and high-profile legal cases. For Lisa, these events feel like they occurred just yesterday—or was it last month? Maybe even 2016?
“Time feels like it’s on fast-forward,” Lisa, a branding consultant based in Manchester, explains. “It still feels like it’s 2020 when we were in lockdown. One minute, my younger sister was getting married. Next, it was March, and Boris Johnson was telling us to stay home.” She recalls one night going to bed and waking up in 2025.
This sense of time moving quickly is not unique to Lisa. Many people today feel as though time is flying, whether they are enjoying life or not. But is time actually speeding up, or is this just a perception?
Understanding Time: A Multidimensional Concept
We live in a four-dimensional world—length, width, depth, and time. Time as a dimension doesn’t flow or tick; it simply exists, observable through changes in our universe. Then there’s clock time, the measurable time marked by seconds, minutes, and hours. Finally, there’s mind time, also known as subjective time—the time we feel passing.
Recent scientific observations suggest that days are becoming shorter. Earth typically takes about 24 hours to complete a rotation, but factors such as ocean tides, volcanic activity, and earthquakes can affect its speed. Over the years, Earth has been spinning faster, resulting in shorter days. Today, for instance, Earth will complete a full rotation 1.34 milliseconds faster than usual, making it one of the shortest days on record.
This trend has led scientists to consider the possibility of a “negative leap second” in 2029 to keep timekeeping systems like GPS accurate. According to Richard Holme, an emeritus professor of geophysics at the University of Liverpool, the Moon plays a role in this phenomenon. The gravitational interaction between Earth and the Moon causes our planet to bulge, and this bulge affects Earth’s rotation.
However, today’s shorter day is due to the Moon being far enough away that its slowing effect is less pronounced.
How We Experience Time
While today’s millisecond difference may seem negligible, it doesn’t fully explain why people like Lisa feel time is slipping away. Our brains process time in complex ways, and while certain areas like the basal ganglia and cerebellum are believed to be involved, their exact roles remain unclear.
Devin Terhune, a reader in experimental psychology at King’s College London, notes that variations in our perception of time may stem from how we process sensory input. Events with more novelty or change tend to feel longer, while monotonous experiences appear shorter.
Stefano Arlaud, a researcher on time perception at Queen Mary University of London, suggests that we have an internal clock made up of a “pacemaker” that emits pulses signaling the passage of time. When we pay close attention, more pulses are registered, making time feel longer. However, when our focus is elsewhere, fewer pulses are counted, and time seems to pass more quickly.
This concept helps explain why time feels slower when we’re young and speeds up as we age. A year for a two-year-old represents half their life, while for a 70-year-old, it’s only 1/70th of their life. Memory becomes a key factor in how we perceive time. Events lacking novelty or variation feel shorter because they leave fewer temporal markers in our minds.
The Impact of Digital Hyperstimulation
The digital environment contributes significantly to this distorted sense of time. Constant exposure to new information, messages, and entertainment creates a state of “digital hyperstimulation.” This leads to poor memory encoding, as the brain struggles to process shallow, rapidly changing content.
Arlaud warns that this constant churn of low-significance content prevents deep processing, leading to a cycle of overload and disconnection. People often feel behind, stressed, and burnt out. Lisa, who works as a self-employed individual, describes her experience as being in an “odd time warp.”
“Weeks bleed into months, and suddenly, two years have passed,” she says.
As the world continues to evolve, so does our perception of time. Whether it’s due to natural changes in Earth’s rotation or the impact of modern technology, the way we experience time is shifting. Understanding these changes can help us navigate the challenges of living in a fast-paced, ever-changing world.
