Eli5: Why, if at all, does it seem like the years go quicker as you get older?

Question

I hear a lot of people making that remark, that the years go by quicker as you get older.
For me, at least, it seems like that’s only the case if nothing much changes in my life in that year.
To me, years seem to feel like they go slower if there’s lots of new/different things happening.

In: 348

Answer 1

I remember once reading a book called The Velocity of Honey, and one of the chapters talked about this. In addition to what others have said here, one of my favourite notable items mentioned in the book is that following a research study based on this topic and the fact that time appears to speed up as you age, it was determined that the subjective half-way point of our lives is about the age of 20. So 0-20 feels more or less the same as 20-80. Depressing, but neat anyways