Why Does Time Appear to Speed Up With Age? | Unveiled

Why Does Time Appear to Speed Up with Age?

Science has proven that time is relative. We all experience its immutable passage differently. And yet, so many of us encounter the same phenomenon as we grow older – time seems to accelerate.

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: Why does time appear to speed up with age?

It’s a common experience for all human beings as they age – time seems to pass by faster and faster. When once “a year” or “a month” or even “a week” seemed to last forever, older generations repeatedly report that those same periods appear to elapse in no time at all. It’s a curious situation where for the young, who have much more time ahead of them, that time feels as though it’s endlessly stretched; but for the old, who have less time ahead of them, it feels unfairly sped up. For some, the phenomenon is surely just simple nostalgia. After all, many people see things in the past through rose-colored glasses, so why wouldn’t it be the same for the passage of time itself? And, to some degree, the nostalgia argument rings true… but there are some more specific, scientific explanations at play, as well.

One example is proportionality theory, which is a complex sounding but actually fairly simple concept. When we’re young, our entire experience of time is comparatively shorter than when we’re older. A five-year-old, for example, having only been alive for five years, naturally appreciates each of those years as though they’re much longer compared to someone who’s sixty. For the five-year-old, one year is twenty percent of their entire lifetime until that point; for the sixty-year-old, it’s less than two percent. Therefore, as we grow older, the measurements of time might seem much smaller simply because we’ve experienced more of them; more weeks, more months, more years, and so on. In theory, it’s the same for every single task we undertake - which perhaps explains why a two-week vacation can seem to fly by for adults but can also feel like an almost endless time with limitless possibilities for children. The adults have had enough vacations to know that they won’t last forever! Apply the same mode of thought to “being alive”, and the latter part of a lifespan rattles by with increasing rapidity.

Away from proportionality theory, however, there are some more physiological approaches - more rooted in science and biology to explain this particular aspect of aging. A child’s metabolic rate moves at a faster rate than an adult’s does. This means that their metabolism - the various chemical processes going on inside their bodies - unfolds at a higher speed. Children’s hearts beat faster and they breathe more frequently, for example. But these simple differences can dramatically change how we experience life. From a biological perspective, the heartbeat and the number of breaths taken help to mark out how much time has passed. So, increase fundamental processes like those, and an individual’s appreciation of time can change; a child effectively experiences “more time” in a shorter period than an older person. It isn’t something that’s just limited to small humans either. According to a 2013 study by a team at Dublin’s Trinity College, smaller animals of other species seem to experience in effect “slower time” for the same reason.

Elsewhere, what can we learn from the organ we use to process how we experience time – the brain? Like the rest of our bodies, our brains are still developing when we’re young. Although it’s been found that children process information at a faster rate than adults, it’s also thought that this overload of data - this abundance of extra work - could make time appear to move more slowly, at least when you’re looking back at it. In many ways, a child’s brain has more to do… so when, as adults, we try to remember being children, it feels as though childhood must’ve lasted forever compared to what we know now. Furthermore, because a child’s developing brain is effectively “unfinished”, it can take a while before it can even accurately identify how much time has passed. On the simplest level, children have to learn how to tell time in the first place; so, until they manage that, they may perceive the passing of it differently. Another reason why time, as a child especially, appears to pass slowly.

The sensation of time speeding up could now have a technological edge, as well. According to a 2015 study by Aoife McLoughlin of James Cook University, Australia, frequent use of technology like smartphones can make us feel as if time is moving faster, simply as a knock-on effect of smart tech enabling us to get everything done at a quicker and more efficient rate. Clearly this is a recent development, but it’s possible that our modern-day internal clocks are now perceiving how quickly we now accomplish tasks and are measuring the passing of time accordingly. And, while instances of children using smart technology are rising, any link with phones, tablets, laptops and the like is going to have a greater effect on adults - contributing yet another reason as to why time might appear to speed up.

The saying goes that “time flies when we’re having fun”, and maybe there’s some truth in that, too. The holiday paradox, which was first proposed by the British writer and psychologist, Claudia Hammond, is an especially interesting phenomenon. As we noted earlier, all too many of us know the feeling of going on a vacation or a trip, only for the experience to seemingly fly by - until we’re left feeling as though it was over in an instant. But there could be more to this than just adults being on the wrong end of proportionality theory. Once a vacation is over, our memories of the time spent can feel incredibly vivid - much more so than our memories of our everyday lives. This is because exciting trips usually involve visiting unfamiliar places and enjoying new and interesting experiences. As such, when we reminisce about the vacation, it might even feel as though we’d spent more time there than we actually did; then comes that feeling of disbelief that we managed to get so much done!

Massively increase that feeling, and you might as well be describing childhood. Because when we’re young everything we do is new and fresh. Everything is particularly interesting, exciting, or especially sad, scary, fun or funny. While a lot of childhood memories don’t last forever, at the time they can feel much more vivid - so the days, weeks and years in which they were made (for better or worse) feel longer when we look back on them. As with many theories on the passing of time, there’s a key difference here between time as we experience it in the “here and now” and time as we view it retrospectively… but our tendency to retrospectively view certain time periods as having lasted longer is really at the heart of today’s question.

It’s one of the reasons why tips to “improve lifestyle” often implore us, as adults, to challenge ourselves; to seek out unfamiliar places or “do one thing that scares you”. By mixing it up a bit, you could create more vivid memories and thereby slow down how quickly you perceive time across your life. As for which, if any, of these explanations is the correct one… there’s no overriding consensus among professionals as yet, but it’s possible that all of them account for some part of the truth. And that’s why time appears to speed up with age.