Why does time seem to go faster as we get older?
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Proportionately, time changes in scale.
For a five year old kid, their next birthday is another 20% of their entire life.
For a 50 year old adult, their next birthday is just another 2% of their life.
There’s long-term memories and then there’s short-term memories. Eating your usual lunch is a short-term memory and will be forgotten in a week but a special lunch at a special place is a long-term memory.
We can only look back and understand passage of time from long-term memories but as we get older there are less and less novel things to do and so less and less long-term memories which is why eventually you’ve *years* that are blank in your memory. So it feels like they didn’t happen or you skipped them.
As to why, storing information is expensive – our brains have evolved to keep as much novel information as possible without repetition to enhance survival and ensure genes get passed to next generation.
I feel as you get older your life becomes more repetitive and if there are no new and exciting memories then your memory just kind of blanks it out (working 9-5 job). When you are constantly going on trips, doing different activities etc. then you feel like you did a lot more because you did.
The general answer which others have said is less new memories due to less new things, and a lot of patterned behavior which blends with old memories. If you want your life to feel slower or longer, deliberately do things you haven’t done. Just go crazy: flavor each day with something. Wear weird socks. Count how many times you can say meow to people one day and not get caught. Go to a skater park or an opera, which you have no known interest in but have never done. Attempt to seduce the old lady at the cleaners.
Suddenly, each day is different again.
There’s long-term memories and then there’s short-term memories. Eating your usual lunch is a short-term memory and will be forgotten in a week but a special lunch at a special place is a long-term memory.
We can only look back and understand passage of time from long-term memories but as we get older there are less and less novel things to do and so less and less long-term memories which is why eventually you’ve *years* that are blank in your memory. So it feels like they didn’t happen or you skipped them.
As to why, storing information is expensive – our brains have evolved to keep as much novel information as possible without repetition to enhance survival and ensure genes get passed to next generation.
There are a lot of “as you get older the amount of new experiences lessens” and similar answers. While I think that could definitely be a strong factor, there’s a big thing that I didn’t see with my cursory look through the comments.
Work. When we get older, we enter the job force. Our amount of time spent at work becomes a huge consumption of our life. We do the same things with the same people. We eat similar lunches, stick to a similar schedule. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. Instead of being able to learn new things that interest us *every day* we have to schedule them around work. These days filled with similar experiences that we don’t usually enjoy will blend together.
Want to do something during the day? Has to wait for the weekend. Want to do something late into the night? Has to wait until you don’t work the next morning. Want to do anything that takes more than a few days, like camping or visiting another state, you have to schedule a vacation that could be months out. And that’s not including scheduling with other people.
On top of the responsibilities of maintaining your living space, and dealing with the general responsibilities of being an adult, we lose so much of our time in which we would otherwise be creating new memories and benchmark experiences. We go from 7 days a week of wild new things, to maybe 2 days of having the option. If you don’t have responsibilities you have to take care of first.
The general answer which others have said is less new memories due to less new things, and a lot of patterned behavior which blends with old memories. If you want your life to feel slower or longer, deliberately do things you haven’t done. Just go crazy: flavor each day with something. Wear weird socks. Count how many times you can say meow to people one day and not get caught. Go to a skater park or an opera, which you have no known interest in but have never done. Attempt to seduce the old lady at the cleaners.
Suddenly, each day is different again.
There are a lot of “as you get older the amount of new experiences lessens” and similar answers. While I think that could definitely be a strong factor, there’s a big thing that I didn’t see with my cursory look through the comments.
Work. When we get older, we enter the job force. Our amount of time spent at work becomes a huge consumption of our life. We do the same things with the same people. We eat similar lunches, stick to a similar schedule. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. Instead of being able to learn new things that interest us *every day* we have to schedule them around work. These days filled with similar experiences that we don’t usually enjoy will blend together.
Want to do something during the day? Has to wait for the weekend. Want to do something late into the night? Has to wait until you don’t work the next morning. Want to do anything that takes more than a few days, like camping or visiting another state, you have to schedule a vacation that could be months out. And that’s not including scheduling with other people.
On top of the responsibilities of maintaining your living space, and dealing with the general responsibilities of being an adult, we lose so much of our time in which we would otherwise be creating new memories and benchmark experiences. We go from 7 days a week of wild new things, to maybe 2 days of having the option. If you don’t have responsibilities you have to take care of first.
Understand that our perception of time depends on our memory of it as a series of flash points to call back on.
Memories in turn are how your brain stores unique experiences for future reference.
Experiences that are *not* new, unique or novel are less likely to be kept as memories.
Adults are less likely to experience events that are new, unique or novel and as so are not going to be forming as many new memories -ergo for them time will appear to move faster.
Understand that our perception of time depends on our memory of it as a series of flash points to call back on.
Memories in turn are how your brain stores unique experiences for future reference.
Experiences that are *not* new, unique or novel are less likely to be kept as memories.
Adults are less likely to experience events that are new, unique or novel and as so are not going to be forming as many new memories -ergo for them time will appear to move faster.
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