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, the way we interact with technology could 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 Yers (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[1] .


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[2] .


"[Technology creates] a funny kind of obsession with time, but it's this very short-focused, immediate-present time," Zimbardo tells The Huffington Post.


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 four 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[3] 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.


Being plugged in keeps us focused on the next thing, looking at the future in a very short term sense of waiting for the next update. According to a 2011 Ipsos poll,[4] 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.' So it's an intensive living in the present, and the future is very short-term. It's about the next hit."


This present-orientation can make us more susceptible to instant gratification.


We live in a world of temptation, says Zimbardo, and being future-oriented -- meaning that we act in the interest of our more long-term goals and values -- is what keeps us from giving in to our momentary desires.


In order to get to any long term goal you have to have plans, an agenda, a to-do list," says Zimbardo. "Future-oriented people are very good at getting these things done.


But when we become excessively present-orientated and focused on instant gratification, we're more susceptible to compulsive behavior.


"Present-oriented people are primed to be addicted to anything, because once they do it and it's good, they can't not do it again," says Zimbardo. "Video games or online activity becomes addictive when you would rather be doing that than anything else in the world. Eventually, it stops being a choice and it becomes an automatic behavior.


You can expand your present moment through mindfulness.


So what's Zimbardo's prescription for those stuck in a cycle of instant gratification? Take a time out.


"We have to take a time out from obsession with time," Zimbardo says. "Sometimes it's to do nothing -- to rest, take a walk, do some Zen breathing exercise."


Through mindfulness practices like meditation, we can bring ourselves into a truly present -- rather than divided and distracted -- present moment. And that can literally slow down time. A recent University of Kent study[5] suggested that mindfulness meditation can actually alter time perception, creating a sense of time slowing down by shifting the brain's attentional resources.


"Zen has another kind of present orientation called the 'expanded present,'" Zimbardo says. "It's not present hedonism -- it's awareness of the self, and ultimately, losing the self."



Also on HuffPost:




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  • You can change the brain's structure and functioning.


    Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson's groundbreaking research on Tibetan Buddhist monks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has found that years of meditative practice can dramatically increase neuroplasticity -- the brain's ability to use new experiences or environments to create structural changes. For example, it can help reorganizing itself by creating new neural connections. "The findings from studies in this unusual sample... suggest that, over the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the long-term practitioners had actually altered the structure and function of their brains," <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/" target="_blank">Davidson wrote in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in 2008.</a>




  • You can alter visual perception and attention.


    In 2005, <a href="https://eprints.usq.edu.au/2552/1/Carter_Presti_Callistemon_Ungerer_Liu_Pettigrew_CB_v15n11_PV.pdf" target="_blank">researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia and University of California at Berkeley</a> traveled to India to study 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks, in order to gain insight into how mental states can affect conscious visual experiences -- and how we might be able to gain more control over the regular fluctuations in our conscious state. Their data indicated that years of meditation training can profoundly affect a phenomenon known as "perceptual rivalry," which takes place when two different images are presented to each eye -- the brain fluctuates, in a matter of seconds, in the dominant image that is perceived. It is thought to be related to brain mechanisms that underly attention and awareness. When the monks practiced meditating on a single object or thought, significant increases in the duration of perceptual dominance occurred. <strong>One monk was able to maintain constant visual perception for 723 seconds -- compared to the average of 2.6 seconds in non-meditative control subjects.</strong> The researchers <a href="https://eprints.usq.edu.au/2552/1/Carter_Presti_Callistemon_Ungerer_Liu_Pettigrew_CB_v15n11_PV.pdf" target="_blank">concluded</a> that the study highlights "the synergistic potential for further exchange between practitioners of meditation and neuroscience in the common goal of understanding consciousness."




  • You can expand your capacity for happiness.


    Brain scans revealed that because of meditation, 66-year-old French monk Matthieu Ricard, an aide to the Dalai Lama, has the largest capacity for happiness ever recorded. University of Wisconsin researchers, led by Davidson, hooked up 256 sensors to his head, and found that Ricard had an unusually large propensity for happiness and reduced tendency toward negativity, due to neuroplasticity. “It’s a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are,” <a href="http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/7b470adb0a9b6c32e19e16a08df13f3d/buddhist-monk-is-the-worlds-happiest-man" target="_blank">Ricard told the New York Daily News.</a> Davidson also found that when Ricard was meditating on compassion, his brain produced gamma waves <a href="http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/7b470adb0a9b6c32e19e16a08df13f3d/buddhist-monk-is-the-worlds-happiest-man" target="_blank">"never reported before in the neuroscience literature."</a>




  • You can increase your empathy.


    Research at Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education made some incredible findings last year. Neuroeconomist Brian Knutson hooked up several monks' brains to MRI scanners to examine their risk and reward systems. Ordinarily, the brain's nucleus accumbens experiences a dopamine rush when you experience something pleasant -- like having sex, eating a slice of chocolate cake, or finding a $20 bill in your pocket. But Knutson's research, still in the early stages, is showing that in Tibetan Buddhist monks, this area of the brain may be able to light up for altruistic reasons. "There are many neuroscientists out there looking at mindfulness, but not a lot who are studying compassion," <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Stanford-studies-monks-meditation-compassion-3689748.php#page-1" target="_blank">Knutson told the San Francisco Chronicle.</a> "The Buddhist view of the world can provide some potentially interesting information about the subcortical reward circuits involved in motivation." Davidson's research on Ricard and other monks also found that meditation on compassion can produce powerful changes in the brain. When the monks were asked to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion," their brains generated powerful gamma waves that may have indicated a compassionate state of mind, <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/dalai.html" target="_blank">Wired reported in 2006.</a> This suggests, then, that empathy may be able to be cultivated by "exercising" the brain through loving-kindness meditation.




  • You can achieve a state of oneness -- literally.


    Buddhist monks can achieve a harmony between themselves and the world around them by breaking the psychological wall of self/other, expressed as by particular changes in the neural networks of experienced meditation practitioners,<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646" target="_blank"> the BBC reported.</a> While a normal brain switches between the extrinsic network (which is used when people are focused on tasks outside themselves) and the intrinsic network, which involves self-reflection and emotion -- the networks rarely act together. But Josipovic found something startling in the brains of some monks and experienced meditators: They're able to keep both networks active at the same time during meditation, allowing them to feel a sense of "nonduality," or oneness.