No one quite knows how time passes on social media; only that it disappears. We open an app for a few minutes and resurface hours later, unsure where those minutes went. A new study in Frontiers in Psychology argues that constant social media use doesn’t just fragment our attention; it reshapes our sense of time itself.
According to the researchers, our brains experience a kind of “compressed time” while scrolling: moments blur together, continuity dissolves, and time becomes a rapid sequence of micro-events. Each post, video, or notification consumes a sliver of awareness before the next one replaces it. Life becomes a stream of disconnected “nows,” leaving no room for genuine duration or reflection.
Psychologists call this temporal fragmentation — the shattering of time into smaller, shallower pieces. In this state, the past fades because new stimuli constantly overwrite it, and the future feels suspended. What remains is an endless present; a loop of instant updates that never quite arrives anywhere.
Participants in the study described a strange distortion: some said “five minutes felt like an hour,” while others said “an hour felt like five minutes.” This confusion reflects the brain’s difficulty in processing an overload of short, emotionally charged content. Our internal clock, evolved for natural rhythms, can’t keep pace with the algorithmic tempo of digital life.
But beyond this individual experience, social media is also reshaping social time. Once, human routines were synchronized; shared meals, work hours, TV broadcasts, collective rituals. Now, every person lives in their own private timeline, consuming and producing content asynchronously. The result is a world where time no longer binds us together; it drifts in parallel streams.
Algorithms have become the new architects of time. They decide what we see and when we see it, curating our sense of “now.” The present isn’t organic anymore; it’s programmed. We live not by daylight or heartbeat but by the rhythm of refresh buttons and push notifications.
The researchers warn that this constant reprogramming of temporal awareness carries psychological costs. When our sense of continuity collapses, memory weakens, narrative falters, and the feeling of self becomes unstable. We might record every moment, yet feel as if none truly belongs to us. The more we document, the less we remember.
Their proposed solution isn’t total disconnection but reclaiming rhythm; rebuilding personal moments outside the algorithmic flow. Taking walks without headphones, having conversations without screens, or even allowing silence between tasks can help restore the texture of time. Only in stillness, they argue, can time regain its shape.
In the end, the crisis of time in the digital age isn’t just about distraction; it’s about presence. If the present is always slipping away, perhaps the most radical act is to stay still long enough to feel it.
Source: Frontiers in Psychology – Time Perception and Social Media Use: A Psychological Perspective
