The Lethe Effect of Social Media

Social feeds don’t just distract; they blunt memory formation so that whole scrolling sessions leave few retrievable memories. Because retrospective time is built from remembered events, poorer encoding makes periods feel shorter, giving the sense of 'lost time' after heavy use. — This frames platform design as a memory‑eroding externality, pushing regulation, product design, and personal norms to account for chronoception and recall, not only screen‑time totals.