It is not rare to hear the words like “It seemed like it was yesterday” or “time flies” spewed by adults. But it turns this is not just another downside of getting older – according to this psychologist our constant use of technology may be making our brains better at processing information. This may be effective when it comes to solving sudoku puzzles, but some speculate it is causing our time perception to become skewed.

Aoife McLoughlin from James Cook University’s Singapore campus said “I’ve found some indication that interacting with technology and technocentric societies has increased some type of pacemaker within us,” . “While it might help us to work faster, it also makes us feel more pressured by time.”

Although the frequent use of technology is a fairly new phenomenon, the speed at which time passes is something that people have complained about for centuries.

McLoughlin believes people’s time perception has sped up significantly more in recent years, and believes technology may be the problem. Her research compares people who are frequently connected to technology and those who rarely use it. She found that the people who were constantly connected had overestimated the amount of time that had passed compared to those who rarely used technology. She observed that while sitting in a room, they’d think that an hour had passed when it had only been 50 minutes.

McLoughlin also observed that the people who read an advertisement for the latest iPad perceived time as passing more quickly than those who had read an excerpt from a non-technological novel.

“It’s almost as though we’re trying to emulate the technology and be speedier and more efficient,” McLoughlin told ScienceAlert. “It seems like there’s something about technology itself that primes us to increase that pacemaker inside of us that measures the passing of time.”

The study suggests that we should all take time to unplug from social media and the Internet often in order to slow down that pacemaker.

“What I’m arguing is that there is a genuine quantifiable cognitive basis for this advice, rather than it simply being about taking a step back,” “It’s a scientific reason to stop and smell the roses.”

But there may still be hope for you phone lovers. McLoughlin is now looking at the possibility that this phenomenon may be having a long-term positive effect.

Other research shows , and help people become faster at performing tasks, which could help us save time in the long run.

“On the positive side, a faster processing speed may be an advantage in many circumstances,” . But she’s also investigating the long-term effects of this speed-up.

“I feel it would lead to an increase in time-stress, which has been linked to heart disease, among other things,” “High time-pressure is also significantly related to distress among both men and women, and is related to increased levels of depression in women who work outside of the home.”

So if time feels like it is passing you by faster than ever, it may not be your old brain but instead your new iphone.