The Not So Quiet Acceleration Of Time
I’ve now heard it three separate times, from three different sources:
time is accelerating.
Of course, that sounds wrong. Time doesn’t speed up.
But our experience of it does.
I had the rare privilege of living on both sides of the internet.
In the 1980s, a day had edges.
You left the house. You came back when the streetlights came on.
There were pauses built into life.
A newspaper sat on the kitchen table.
Someone had to get up to change the television channel.
Cookouts at Eva’s felt like they lasted ten hours, even if they were only half a day.
Now everything hums along.
You wake up, check your phone instantly, and move through routines that blur together.
Before you can name what happened, another month—or season—is gone.
Time didn’t change.
We did.
There are at least three forces driving this:
1. The Routine Loop
Repetition compresses memory. When days look the same, the brain encodes less detail.
Fewer details mean fewer markers.
Fewer markers make time feel shorter in retrospect.
Routine is efficient—but it can make life feel invisible.
2. The Weight of Constant Input
We now process more information in a day than prior generations did in months.
Slack. Teams. Texts. Email. Social feeds.
Your nervous system never gets a clean “end.”
It stays slightly activated—vigilant—all day.
3. The Phone Trap
Scrolling is time without memory.
It fills space but leaves no imprint.
An hour passes, but it doesn’t feel lived.
There used to be boredom.
And boredom had a purpose.
Commercial breaks. Waiting. Quiet.
These were not empty moments—they were where time expanded.