Why does time seem to go so much faster as an adult? When we were kids, everything seemed to go on forever.
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A working theory is that New experiences (Novelty) make much more distinct associations with specific events, time periods etc. AS you get older, you (generally) experience far fewer novel stimuli, and memories of engaging in a non-novel stimuli are difficult to tell apart from the hordes that came before.
Novel experiences are thus like highlights that occur in the timeline of your life, allowing you to recall back accurately to them and remembered associated memories and emotions, whereas days that feel the same (due to a lack of novelty) are like a blur of indistinguishable events that make up the bulk of your timeline (they are literally unmemorable). The boring nature of such days makes it difficult for your brain to attach a sense of time progression to them.
But you can easily think back like “*I played hockey from 3rd grade to 12th grade*, and *”I learned physics from 10th grade to 12th grade*”. It’s much harder to assign happenings to mundane adult years. From 2012-2016 I did pretty much the same thing I did from 2018-2019. But then the pandemic happened (“Highlight” – novel experience) and I remember much more about that year because it was so strange.
TL;DR as you live longer, you experience less novelty. The days that lack novelty all begin to blur together giving you the impression of more/less time passing depending on how memorable they were on the basis of novelty.
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