 The world has quickened and quickened without our conscious knowledge since the Internet was created. When December 2019 rolled around, I was buzzing with the thought of the new incoming decade. My friends and I talked about it extensively, sharing jokes about it and how we were all steadily approaching our 20s now. There was something almost bittersweet in thinking about moving away from the decade that had made us into the people we were today. However, for my parents, it didn't feel as much of a big deal as everyone was making it out to be. It wasn't until I was talking to them, however, that I realized why. We had all just come out of the cinema room after watching Little Women and were loitering around the lobby, talking about the themes of family and womanhood in the movie. I was surfing the news app on my phone when I stumbled onto an article by The Washington Post, which talked about how how the 2010s felt less like a formative decade (unlike its counterparts, the 1970s or the 1990s, which all have specific aesthetics and movements we relation to them) and more like a continuous stream of time that began in the 2000s. And really, if one stops to think about it, this is true. Since the Internet was popularized, time has managed to go faster and faster than even before: days fade into months fade into years. It feels like 2012 was only two years ago, when in reality it was eight. What exactly is it about the digital age that changes the continuity of time as we had known it? For starters, information is being bombarded at us in a constant stream. One only has to look as far back as March and April of this year to see how true this is. When news of COVID-19 reached a high fever in the United States and in Europe, time slowed down considerably. Days trickled slowly by as we all awaited the next batch of news that would tell us how the health crisis was being handled, how many cases were in our cities, how many global deaths there had been--and so forth. We became conscious of how necessary it was to seek out the next piece of news. When April came, however, we were so used to seeing COVID-19 news that we, some of us consciously, decided to tune it out. The constant news cycle became background noise, and I don't know about you, but for me April was the fastest-moving month I've had in a long time. We, as a society, have done the same over a larger period of time. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, information has been thrown at us in every direction through the Internet. We have had to adapt to that, and so we have managed to tune out this vast wave of information in a way that moves us forward much faster than ever before. The information is there, keeping us busy, but we learn to adapt so that it doesn't consume our every waking thought. This is a phenomenon that's occurred right under our noses for many years, and as a baby born right on the cusp of this transformation, it's interesting to see how older generations have adapted to this change. We see our parents and grandparents grappling occasionally with their newest technological devices, but having to create new mental processes to be able to adapt to the onslaught of information that is almost a byproduct of being alive in the 21st century is an invisible feat that should be more applauded. It's the basic principle of adapt and survive, but placed in the modern context of our overwhelming technological advancements. Our parents and grandparents might have seen the creation of the radio, color television, the computer and even the Internet, but they saw all of this through the perspective of their own individual communities. Now, they see everything through the perspective of at least five different countries, at all times. Their brains have had to make minute, unconscious adjustments to the digital age in ways that those born in the 21st century are already equipped with doing as soon as they're infants. And, to me, that's simply one of the most impactful feats of human adaptation that we can see on a daily basis. If you want to know more about the psychological processes of how technology has sped up our perception of time, here's an article that explains it pretty succinctly.
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