How Technology Speeds Up Time (And How To Slow It Down Again)
It often feels as though time speeds up as we age, with each season and year seemingly passing by more quickly than the last. And according to some psychologists, in addition to aging, the way we interact with technology could also have a profound effect on the way we experience time.
Sitting in front of computers all day, we’re constantly confronted by a clock telling us what time it is, and it’s no different whether we’re at home or on the go: 60 percent of Gen Years (ages 18-30) find themselves compulsively or subconsciously checking their smart phones for emails, texts, or social media updates, according to a 2012 Cisco report.
This ever-present technology is changing not only the way we perceive time, but also the way we think, according to Dr. Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford and author of The Time Paradox: The New Psychology Of Time That Will Change Your Life.
The way we perceive and experience time can have a profound psychological effect. Far from being objective, time is, in fact, a highly subjective experience, one that’s subject to technological and cultural influences. From an early age, our highly malleable time perceptions become biased. In The Time Paradox, Zimbardo argues that we all operate from one of three primary time biases. Those who tend to think of their current experiences in terms of what they’ve already experienced are past-oriented, those who focus on the immediate are present-oriented, and those who think in long-term projections are more future-oriented.
“Time has a powerful effect on our lives that we’re unaware of,” says Zimbardo. “I argue that it’s the most powerful influence on everything we do. It’s so powerful because we get programmed very early in life to be in one of these ‘time zones.’”
The ideal balance, Zimbardo explains, is to be moderately future-oriented (enough to be motivated to work towards our goals but not so much as to breed workaholism), moderately past-positive (when we look back on our lives, we have a generally positive outlook), and moderately “present hedonistic,” meaning that we take time out for friends, family and fun, but are not so pleasure-oriented as to have addictive tendencies.
But over-reliance on technology – constantly checking email and social networks, and being distracted by alerts on our mobile devices – can take us out of both the past and the future, and into a state of heightened “present hedonism” in which we’re constantly focused (in a sometimes compulsive way) on what’s either right in front of us or coming immediately afterwards.
“We’re simply being in that moment to take the next action,” says Zimbardo. “It’s really minimizing the quality of life. It’s minimizing the joy that we ought to be getting from everyday life.”
Here are things you should know about how technology affects your perception of time.
Being connected can speed up your sense of time.
Our constant access to virtually unlimited amounts of news and updates can create a need for immediacy that speeds up both our information intake and our perception of time.
“Our personal ‘time zone’ can be modified by technology, because it speeds up our internal clock,” says Zimbardo. “Technology makes us impatient for anything that takes more than seconds to achieve. You press a button and you expect instant access … so technology is pushing more and more of us into a very immediately-focused time zone. That means that we tend to ignore the future consequences of our behavior.”
Because we’re used to being constantly occupied, many of us have a hard time slowing down or waiting. A 2012 Pew survey found that among Millennials, hyper-connectivity can contribute to a need for instant gratification and a lack of patience.
It can trap us in the ‘next’ moment.
Technology can trap us in a cycle of instant gratification – we’re stuck in a present moment in which we are not fully present because we’re also anticipating the next moment, Zimbardo explains.
According to a 2011 Ipsos poll, 27 percent of teens use Facebook continuously throughout the day.
“They’re constantly checking, hoping that something will be there,” says Zimbardo. “Hope is a very future-oriented thing, but it’s a very short term thing. ‘I hope somebody will see the picture I posted, I hope somebody will respond.’”
生词记录
compulsively 强迫性地
subconsciously 下意识地
ever-present 始终存在的，永远在场的
preceive 感知，察觉，注意到，意识到；认为，看待，视为
emeritus 荣誉退休的
paradox 悖论
malleable 可塑的，易受外界影响的
biased 偏见的，片面的
-oriented 以···为导向的，以···为目标的
moderately 适度，适量，适中
breed 饲养；（动物）交配繁殖；导致
workahollism 工作狂
hedonistic 享乐主义的
minimize 使减到最少，使降到最低限度
immediacy 即时性
millennial 千禧年的
hyper- 超出，过度
gratification 满足，满意，快感
trap 被困住，陷入困境
