Why time runs faster on Social Media

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Why does time seem to run faster on social media? Prof. Dr. Zhuanghua Shi, who leads the Multisensory Perception Lab at LMU’s Chair of Neuro-Cognitive Psychology, studies how the brain constructs time from attention and memory. In this interview, he explains why scrolling alters our sense of duration, why even a silent phone on the desk can drain attention, and how fragmented attention may also shape what remains of our days in memory, especially for a generation growing up with constant digital input.

Time seems to fly when we scroll through apps like Instagram. How does neurocognitive psychology investigate this phenomenon?

Zhuanghua Shi: My lab studies this by asking how the brain constructs the feeling of time. We have been investigating time perception for about fifteen years, long before social media entered the picture. From a neurocognitive perspective, the brain actively builds our sense of duration, in the moment through attention and later through memory.

Scrolling is a particularly revealing case, because it combines intense attentional capture, rapid change, self-paced interaction, and very little narrative structure. Social media is designed to grab attention, and attention is one of the key mechanisms the brain uses to track time. So we tested what happens to time perception when our attention is constantly drawn to this kind of media.

Scrolling for research

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What methods did you use?

We literally brought scrolling into the lab. Participants were shown comparable content in three conditions. In one, they actively scrolled through it themselves, similar to Instagram. In another, they passively watched the comparable material play automatically, more like a movie. In the baseline condition, they simply looked at a single stable landscape image. After each block, we asked them how long it had seemed and tested their memory for what they had seen.

Throughout the experiment, participants sat in front of the screen wearing an EEG cap fitted with sensors to record brain activity, while their eye movements were tracked at the same time. This matters because attention is not just something people report subjectively, but something that also leaves objective traces in the brain. So far, we have tested around twenty participants. The data are still preliminary, but the pattern is already quite clear.

What does social media do to our sense of time?

Both passive viewing and scrolling made time feel shorter than simply looking at a stable image, and scrolling added a further, though smaller, effect. For example, when the content lasted 40 seconds, participants estimated it at around 30 seconds during passive watching and only 27 seconds during scrolling.

The eye-tracking data support this pattern. In both dynamic conditions, fixations became shorter and more frequent. At the same time, active scrolling led to somewhat better memory than passive watching. When people choose their own path through the content, that seems to preserve memory to some extent.

So scrolling can give you a sense of control and the feeling that you have been doing something worthwhile, while time itself seems to vanish.

Scrolling and attention

Does the effect stop once I put the phone down?

Probably not immediately, as attention doesn’t have a clean off switch. Part of your attention remains attached to the previous task for some time, a phenomenon called “attentional residue”. You may already be talking to a colleague, but part of your mind is still primed to look for the next thing to swipe to.

The reward system can remain activated as well, still waiting for the next small reinforcement, creating that urge to check the phone again. And if an experience is only half-attended to in the moment, it is less likely to leave a clear memory afterwards.
But this state is reversible. Around twenty minutes of something continuous, such as walking, reading, or having a real conversation, is often enough to pull attention back together.

What do your findings suggest about the effects of television, computer games, or books on our sense of time?

A key question is not only how absorbing different media are in the moment, but also how much structure they leave behind in memory. A good example is the holiday paradox: a two-week holiday can feel very short while you are in it, but long in retrospect because it leaves many distinct memories behind. So, attention tends to compress time in the moment, while structure and narrative help preserve it in retrospect.

Gaming is also highly absorbing, but it usually provides some structure, such as levels, goals, or turning points, which remain in memory. Television seems to compress both forms of time. A novel may also make time fly in the moment, but its narrative often leaves a richer trace afterwards, because readers actively form mental images of scenes, actions, and characters as they read. Scrolling, by contrast, makes time pass quickly in the moment, but often leaves weaker memories afterwards.

Growing Up with a Smartphone: Possible Consequences

What might this mean for a generation of constant smartphone users?

We do not yet know the full answer. In a sense, this generation is still the experiment. But we do understand the mechanisms well enough to see three things: attention shapes how we experience time. Time experience influences what becomes memory. And memory is what we rely on when we build the story of our lives.

Older adults often report that the years seem to pass faster as they age, almost like an acceleration of life. One explanation may be the same mechanism we see in scrolling: daily life contains fewer new landmarks and leaves thinner memory traces. One striking possibility is that heavy digital use may produce in people’s twenties and thirties the kind of time compression that people used to start experiencing in their sixties.

The experiences may still matter, but become harder to place in time, distinguish, and remember vividly.

Measures to preserve memory

What countermeasures might help?

First, keep the phone at a distance. Studies show that even a silent phone on the desk can act as an attentional magnet in the background.

Also, make room for activities that hold your attention for at least twenty minutes, such as reading, walking, exercising, or having a real conversation. Set clear time boundaries, like phone-free mornings or meals. Measures that require you to pick up your phone, such as screen-time dashboards or digital wellness tools, tend to help less or make the problem worse.

And to protect our memories in a world of constant distraction by pings and scrolling, it helps to build in memorable experiences, for example by trying something new, meeting new people, or breaking everyday routines.

What does this suggest for the debate about age restrictions on social media?

I’m a researcher, not a policymaker. But the evidence supports delay more than prohibition. During adolescence, the reward system is particularly sensitive to rewards and stimulation, while the ability to control impulses and regulate attention is still maturing into the early twenties. And since a phone can reduce attention simply by being present, a thirteen-year-old with a smartphone in their pocket during class is already paying an attentional cost, even if they never unlock it.

So this is not just a “use it responsibly” problem. We already restrict alcohol, gambling, and driving by age for similar reasons. Given what we know about attention and the developing brain, it seems reasonable to consider similar protections in the case of social media.

About the person

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Professor Zhuanghua Shi heads the Multisensory Perception Lab at LMU’s Chair of Neuro-Cognitive Psychology. He studies how the brain combines information from different senses, how attention shapes perception, and how context and prior expectations influence what we experience. His research combines behavioural experiments, brain measurements, and computational modelling. Shi is also affiliated with the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences and the Neuroimaging Core Unit Munich.