Apart from disrupting economies and healthcare systems, the COVID-19 pandemic warped a deeply personal cognitive process: our perception of time. With normal routines like going to school, hanging out with friends, and going shopping fading away, it became common for many people to lose track of the date.
“While [the pandemic] was happening, [the one and a half years] felt way longer,” said Serafina Joseph ’26. “I wasn’t really doing anything, [and] there were no monumental things happening.”
But when reflecting on the pandemic, students find that their perception of its total duration shrank, despite feeling like every day was crawling in the moment.
“Things do seem faster … it has messed up how I view time,” said Alena Ivanov ’27.
Students from around the world share the sentiment that the passage of time has felt different ever since March 2020. During the pandemic, the disruption of daily routines caused temporal landmarks and distinction between days to fade, commonly leading to the telescoping effect — the underestimate or overestimate to the recency of past events. A 2022 study conducted by the National Institute of Health found a significant relationship between time perception, focus, and awareness. Consequently, the side effects of the telescoping effects and other cognitive distortions of time include inaccurate, fragmented memories, poor decision-making, and a higher risk for mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Higher overall levels of mental health disorders during the pandemic further exacerbated the effects of this temporal disintegration.
Years after the pandemic, students still notice its lingering effects on their perception of time. Although purchasing a pack of paper masks for the first time may at times feel like a distant memory, there are also moments where the announcement about school being cancelled for two weeks feels like yesterday. Whether the events feel like a day, a year, or a decade ago, the change in routine and emotional upheaval of the pandemic makes many feel like they missed out on a valuable time of their lives.
“[It feels] like we’re still kind of making up for lost time,” said Ivanov.