The Stolen Time Effect: Why Our Days Feel Shorter - Screen Time and Kids
- Renee Zilm
- Sep 6
- 5 min read
Hey friend,
How is it September already? I swear Christmas was only a couple of months ago!.... Sound familiar?
Do you ever look at the clock and think, “Wait. How is it 5pm already?!” Like, I swear I just made breakfast ten minutes ago, but now I’m staring down dinner prep with a child hanging off my hip and an inbox full of emails I swore I’d get to.
We all joke about time flying as we get older, but here’s the thing: time hasn’t sped up. Physics hasn’t changed. We have. More specifically, the way we spend our time has. And it’s stealing something so precious we often don’t realize it until it’s too late, our presence with our kids, our partners, ourselves.
I call it The Stolen Time Effect.
The Myth of “Time Moving Faster”
When we were kids, summer holidays stretched on forever. Waiting for Christmas morning felt like an eternity.
Now? Blink and you’ve missed it.
Why? It’s not because the calendar secretly added turbo mode. It’s because of attention. Neuroscience shows that our perception of time is directly linked to where our attention goes.
When we’re immersed in a flow activity (say, painting with your child, gardening, or even a long walk), time feels rich and expansive. When we’re skimming, scrolling, and toggling between apps, time fragments, and our brain registers it as having “disappeared.”
Psychologists call this time compression: the more divided your attention, the less “memory markers” your brain lays down. Translation: hours spent doom-scrolling on your phone = your brain barely records the experience. Which makes it feel like time has vanished.
The Dopamine Trap (a.k.a. Why You and Your Kids Can’t Stop Checking Your Phone)
Every time your phone pings with a new email, message, or like, your brain gets a tiny squirt of dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical. It’s the same neurochemical involved in addiction pathways.
That little red notification dot? It’s a slot machine lever in your pocket.
And here’s where it gets tricky: dopamine isn’t about pleasure. It’s about seeking. It drives the urge to check “just one more time.” So even when scrolling leaves you feeling drained, your brain keeps chasing the next hit.
If it’s this hard for us grown adults with fully formed prefrontal cortices (the brain’s impulse-control center), imagine handing that same dopamine slot machine to a seven-year-old whose brain wiring is still under construction. Yikes!!!
Kids, Screens, and the Developing Brain
Children’s brains are especially vulnerable to dopamine hijacking. Their prefrontal cortex, the bit responsible for self-control, planning, and saying “enough now”, won’t fully mature until their mid-20s.
Research shows that excessive screen time is linked with:
Shorter attention spans
Higher anxiety and irritability
Sleep disruption
Reduced capacity for emotional regulation
From a yoga therapy and Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective, overwhelmed and fractious digital attention often creates a kind of energetic congestion, specifically in the Wood-element meridians of the Liver (emotion regulation, flow, planning) and Gallbladder (courage, execution, boundaries).
Meridian Yoga Therapy uses targeted poses, breathwork, and mindful movement to clear those pathways. In TCM terms, too much screen time is exactly the kind of activity that fuels Liver Qi stagnation, think irritability, headaches, eye strain, fragmented thinking, which in turn knocks the Gallbladder off its game: less decisiveness, harder to act, more indecision.
The Stolen Time for Parents
Here’s the kicker: it’s not just our kids. It’s us, too.
How many of us have caught ourselves scrolling while our child is telling a story? Half listening while nodding at our phone? I’ve been there (more than once). And every time I think back, my stomach twists. Because those little moments, the bedtime giggles, the car-ride chats, even the whiny “Muuum, he took my toy”, they are childhood.
When we trade them for another round of Instagram reels or work emails, we’re not just losing minutes. We’re losing connection. Presence. Memories.
The irony? Many parents I talk to know this, and yet we still do it (myself included). That’s the dopamine trap again; it overrides logic.
What the Research Says
Let’s anchor this in evidence (because you know my nerdy side loves data):
A 2019 study in JAMA Pediatrics found that screen time in preschoolers was linked with poorer performance on language and literacy tests.
Research on “technoference” (yep, that’s a real term) shows that parental phone use during interactions with children is associated with more child behavior problems, likely because the child experiences micro-moments of disconnection.
A 2022 review in Frontiers in Psychology showed that children who model parents’ high phone use tend to develop their own problematic patterns earlier, setting the stage for long-term self-regulation challenges.
So when you feel guilty for “just checking your phone at the playground,” you’re not overreacting. These micro-fractures in attention add up.
Time Isn’t the Enemy. Distraction Is.
Here’s the truth bomb: time hasn’t changed. The way we spend it has.
We’re not victims of a broken clock; we’re victims of divided attention. The Stolen Time Effect tricks us into believing days are shorter, when in reality, they’re just more fragmented.
And the more we live this way, the more we risk teaching our kids that this is normal. Those conversations can always be interrupted. That connection is optional. That boredom should always be filled with swipes and taps instead of curiosity and imagination.
What Can We Do? (Small Shifts That Matter)
I’m not here to shame anyone. Phones aren’t evil. Tech has given us incredible tools, connections, and sometimes even sanity-savers as parents. But we can reclaim stolen time with intentional shifts.
Here are some ideas (backed by both neuroscience and yoga therapy principles):
1. Phone-Free Pockets
Set sacred no-phone times: dinner, bedtime stories, and the first 30 minutes after school. Let kids see you choosing them over a screen.
2. Replace Dopamine with Oxytocin
Swap the scroll for connection. Oxytocin — the bonding hormone — is released through hugs, laughter, and eye contact. It calms the nervous system and builds trust. Kids need oxytocin hits way more than dopamine jolts.
3. Mindful Micro-Practices
Instead of grabbing your phone in every pause, practice a grounding breath or mini-stretch. Even three slow breaths can reset the urge. (In yoga therapy, we call this “shifting state” — moving from reactive to responsive).
4. Model Discomfort Tolerance
Show your child it’s okay to be bored. Boredom is the birthplace of creativity. Resist the urge to fill every silence with a device.
5. Use the Body as an Anchor
Dynamic poses like Star Pose, Dragon, and Warrior sequences help release the “stuck” energy that builds up when kids are glued to screens. These shapes open the hips and legs, directly stimulating the Liver and Gallbladder meridians, the pathways linked to frustration, decision-making, and courage.
Once that extra energy is discharged, calming shapes bring the system back into balance. A simple Forward Fold helps soothe the nervous system and quiet a racing mind, while Legs Up the Wall shifts the body into full rest-and-digest mode, replenishing energy and offering the opposite of digital stimulation.
Together, this active-then-restorative flow mirrors how yoga therapy treats overstimulation: first release the excess, then restore calm.
A Different Kind of Legacy
When our kids are grown, they won’t remember our perfectly curated Instagram feed. They’ll remember how we looked at them when they talked, whether we laughed at their knock-knock jokes. Whether we saw them build the tower, jump around like a jack rabbit or if bedtime goodnights were phone-free.
The Stolen Time Effect doesn’t have to win. Time is still here, steady as ever. What changes everything is how we choose to spend it, moment by moment, breath by breath.
Bringing It Back to You
So here’s my gentle nudge: next time you feel that itch to check your phone mid-conversation with your child, pause. Take one slow inhale. One soft exhale. Notice their little face, their eyes waiting for you.
That’s real time. That’s the stuff you’ll never get back and never regret choosing.
Because time isn’t running faster.
We’re just giving it away.
And, now's the time to start taking it back.
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