The Effect of Social Media and Covid on Our Perception of Time.

Our brains are sculpted by the eras and cultures in which they were formed, therefore we have vastly different ways of processing contemporary experience. But it seems to me that with Covid and the rapid development of the internet, future generations are going to have a very different experience of something even as fundamental as time. In an era where a meme counts as an argument, it seems like the correlation between time and ideas might become warped. I have noticed that, in my own life, time has been moving at a peculiar pace. The lack of change in my day to day life has turned the past six months into a single extended moment. This experience has given me a very visceral notion of time’s malleability. I wonder how the near instantaneous, pictorial, symbolic method of communication that characterizes the direction modern language is headed, will effect a child who grows up emersed in it. I also wonder what effect a change in our collective perception of time will have of the grammatical construction of the English Language. Will the formal structure of our language modulate itself to fit the heightened speed of time?

Yellow Sweater

WA

YWP Alumni Advisor

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