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Why does time speed up as you get older?

Clocks don't speed up, but our sense of time does. The best-supported explanation is memory: children meet new things all the time and lay down dense, detailed memories, so looking back a year feels long. Adult life is full of routine, which leaves fewer memories, so years seem to shrink in hindsight. A year is also a smaller slice of a longer life.

Two kinds of time in your head

Psychologists separate two judgements. Prospective time is how long something feels while it happens: a boring wait drags. Retrospective time is how long it seems when you look back, and it depends on how many distinct memories you made. The two often disagree, and that disagreement explains most of the "time flies" feeling.

1. A year is a smaller part of your life

In 1877 the French philosopher Paul Janet suggested that we judge a period against the life we have already lived. To a 5-year-old a year is a fifth of their whole life; to a 50-year-old it is a fiftieth. The idea is neat and easy to picture, though it is a description rather than a measured law, and studies find people's sense of time speeding up mostly over longer spans like years and decades, not single days.

2. New experiences make memories, and memories make time

When everything is new, the brain records it in detail. Children learn a new skill, place or word almost every day, so a childhood summer is packed with distinct memories. Adults repeat the same commute, desk and evenings, and the brain stores repeats as one blurred memory. Look back on a routine year and there is little to "count", so it feels short.

The writer and psychologist Claudia Hammond calls the clearest example the holiday paradox: a week away in a new place flies by while you are there, yet feels long when you remember it, because it is crammed with new memories. A dull week at home feels slow while you live it and then vanishes from memory.

3. Children are still learning what time is

Young children live mostly in the present. Most can't judge durations like "five minutes" well until about age 6 or 7, and reading an analog clock usually comes between 6 and 8. Waiting is hard when you can't picture how long is left, which is why a visual countdown like a time-out timer or a classroom timer helps so much.

4. Other ideas researchers are testing

Some researchers think the speed of perception itself changes. The engineer Adrian Bejan has argued that as nerves age, the brain takes in fewer "frames" of images per second, so fewer moments are recorded. It is an interesting hypothesis, not a settled finding. Emotion matters too: fear makes moments feel longer, and busy, absorbing work makes hours disappear.

How to make time feel longer

See how much of your life has passed with the age calculator, or picture time on a far bigger scale with Earth's history in 24 hours.

Questions people ask

Does time really go faster as you age?

No. Clock time is the same. What changes is how long periods seem, especially when you look back on them.

Why did summers feel so long as a child?

They were full of new experiences, so they left many detailed memories. When you look back, more memories make a period feel longer.

What is the holiday paradox?

A holiday seems to fly by while you are on it but feels long when you remember it, because it is packed with new memories. The term was popularised by Claudia Hammond.

How can I make time feel slower?

Add novelty: new places, new skills and breaks from routine create more memories, which makes the time feel longer when you look back.

Sources

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