I'm not normally a conspiracy person (although I do watch stuff like the History Channel, Sci channel, Discovery, etc), but I just need somewhere to rant about this with people who won't be contrarian or make stupid sex jokes to distract from the issue.
I'm Gen Z but I've been feeling very Luddite. I've noticed time has picked up pace quite a bit since COVID when my screen use went through the roof. Yeah, OK, I'm older by… A couple years? But I'm still a young person. It's not like I'm eighty: Jesus…
I've noticed that, on the times I've been on holiday and my screen use has only been ~30 mins a day, or for a period when my smartphone broke and I was using either a hand-me-down or a Nokia brick, time was significantly slower. Now, time doesn't slow down subjectively for me just when I stop using my phone for a few minutes. I have to detox before the effect has to kick in. Then, time starts to run at a snail's pace, like how a 1 hour maths class used to feel at school. In June, I was almost able to achieve the same effect with an app that places restrictions on addictive apps but, hey, I'm addicted.
I'm not the only person who keeps track of time. I went to the YT channel of my old workplace and during an important event, I even caught my old fashioned boss (who could be a real dick sometimes about modern stuff) miss a cue because he was scrolling away, and he was caught unawares. My own mum is very intelligent, when she's scrolling Facebook or IG reels, she just stares gormlessly at her screen for hours and then later complains she has no free time after work, even though she spent all her free time watching AI slop. I'll concede, I'm being hypocritical as I have the same issue. I wake up to my phone, I spend 11 hours at work on a computer which burns my retinas out, when I go home to watch TV while being on my phone. All while time just zips by. An hour feels like 15 minutes. 5 hours feels like an hour.
Physicists have known for at least a century that time is not an objective constant. It changes depending on your speed, your mass, whatever. And time also passes subjectively depending on the person. I think phones are genuinely speeding up time for the rest of us. By taking away our free time for doing normal human things like talking or playing crosswords, it means our life is shorter. As time speeds up, our lives become shorter. We are continuously stimulated, never having new experiences, yet also never allowed to become bored. Life then just glides by. Now that I no longer go on big trips with my late dad, and now I'm just stuck on screens my whole waking life, my memory has turned to mush and my dreams sterile.
Not sure what fallacy this is, but to make phones seem even worse, I'm not sure all the blue light is that worse for you. My visual snow became worse significantly after COVID, but it did improve during the periods I wasn't glued to the phone.
In conclusion, my father was right. It was the damn phone. I'd stick with the Nokia for good if it wasn't for WhatsApp and Google Maps. I'm just so addicted as well.
Posted by Whole_Maybe5914
1 Comment
One thing that I think needs to be explored is how trauma manipulates our sense of time. There are many neurological studies that examine this. Time cant speed or slow but our perception can change and that perception can be impacted by trauma, life experiences, drug use, etc.
The other thing Ill add is the complex nature of language and translation. In English (US) we will say “give me a minute.” Someone who is Spanish speaking might say “un momento,” or a moment. This shows that language reflects our understansing of time. Is the minute actually a minute? Or a moment? And is a minute 60 seconds or however long the pause ends up being? I think its fascinating because time is such an abstract concept for humans to even try to understand (the common fear of dying directly relates to time, for example). So in the context of trauma and experience our brain works to make time make sense hence us viewing it as faster or slower. This is something that is taken advantage of imo.
Im not sure if time can expand past its pace but i know that how I interact with it will greatly impact my understanding.