We were not built to live like this, and our brains are rebelling.

Drowning in perpetual overstimulation and dopamine bursts, the modern mind has entered an everlasting “RAM mode.” Often called working memory, it is highly limited and easily overwhelmed by the constant influx of new information, a phenomenon known as cognitive overload. While the brain’s long-term storage is vast, our conscious, immediate, and temporary processing capacity is limited to a few items at once. 

Here is how modern brains are “stuck” in RAM mode due to information excess and strained memory creation:

Before 2000, there was a certain rhythm to life. Days felt different, seasons were distinct, and our experiences unfolded like slow-moving cinema.

But after 2000, the act of recording started to shallow. With the advent of the internet, smartphones, social media, endless scrolling, and screen addiction, our brains have become bombarded by an onslaught of information and have stopped forming deep memories.

With fewer memories, the years started feeling shorter and more compact.

The brain believes that nothing new worth storing is happening, so time compresses.

Every cycle of notification, scroll, switch, refresh, and repeat functions as a kind of interruption that resets the brain’s sense of continuity.

So it can no longer build and maintain extended mental timelines.

The days feel chaotic, but the years vanish.

Then the pandemic arrived, and our perception of time got permanently rewired.

Fear, uncertainty, stress, isolation, and monotony devastated our neural networks, impacting the way our brains handle forethought and the formation of memories.

The prefrontal cortex reduced its need for planning, the hippocampus stopped logging “time markers,” and the nervous system got stuck in survival mode.

The side effects:

Days blur. Weeks vanish. Years magically merge together.

Time speeds up when the human brain is overwhelmed, stressed, lacking novelty, or unable to form deep memories. Technically, time never changed, but our brain’s ability to experience it the same way did.

Information overload, a lack of new experiences, and strikingly fragmented attention spans are the perfect ingredients for lives that feel forgettable, monotonous, and unfulfilling.

We need newness, more sustained focus, presence, adventure, and genuine moments…and these are quickly becoming rare commodities in a world that refuses to stop and catch its breath.

Your brain is what determines your experience of time. Not a clock or a calendar.

Sweep away the distractions and take back control of your life.

Adolescence Interrupted

…and stop killing animals.