Eli5 Why does time feel so different when you’re an adult vs a kid?

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I remember being a kid thinking waiting for an event that was 2 weeks away felt like 2 years away.

I remember school days feeling like it dragged on and on.

Now as a working adult, I can’t remember what day is is tomorrow or even today. My days bleeds in together in a good way.

As a kid, having less things to do was a factor. As an adult, you find there’s not enough hours in a day.

How do you remember experiencing time as a child?

In: Biology

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s a fantastic (https://youtu.be/aIx2N-viNwY) about this by Veritasium. Basically our internal clocks (essentially the speed at which neurons fire in the brain) run slower the older we get, and we perceive time differently. In the beginning of the video he starts a timer and asks people of varying ages to yell stop after a minute. The older people stopped it way later, because their perception of time was different. One guy stopped it at 1m40s.

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