Is Time Speeding Up?

timeBrooks Agnew – I know what you’re thinking. Time is speeding up. It feels like that because so much is coming at us all at once. Perhaps it is a function of the 24-hour news cycle. Perhaps it is the electric environment with extended daytime provided by lights and multi-time-zone access to live events. Is time is moving at the same rate it has moved for thousands of years?

Perhaps, what is really happening is a compression of awareness that occurs we have more of a database from which to draw for comparison. “Where did the time go?” middle-aged and older adults often remark. Many of us feel that time passes more quickly as we age, a perception that can lead to regrets. According to psychologist and BBC columnist Claudia Hammond, “the sensation that time speeds up as you get older is one of the biggest mysteries of the experience of time.” Fortunately, our attempts to unravel this mystery have yielded some intriguing findings. Continue reading