Why we underestimate time when we’re on Facebook

Man gazing at computer screen

Updating your Facebook status can be a fun way to while away the hours – but now it seems it really is making us lose track of time as we do it.

New research from PhD student Lazaros Gonidis and Dr Dinkar Sharma suggests that people who are using Facebook or surfing the web suffer impaired perception of time.

Researchers from the University’s School of Psychology found that the way people perceived time varied according to whether their internet use was specifically Facebook related or more general.

Using well-established internal clock models, researchers attempted to separate the roles of ‘attention’ and ‘arousal’ as drivers for time distortion. The researchers found that Facebook-related stimuli can lead to an underestimate of time compared to general internet use, but that both lead to a distortion of time.

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