Do you feel like time seems to move faster the older you get?

Question

it seems like the long hot summers were endless when I was a kid.. and now the days and seasons flip by like a fast movie reel...

any one else who feels this way? Any theories as to why this seems to be so?

Answer 1

I completely understand where your coming from.  I do feel the same way lol.  But how i look at it is.  As a child, you have no care in the world, you have a lot of time to your self, and you don't have to think about bills, school, work, family, all these different forms of stress.  Now because we have that to deal with, we are so caught up in it, and trying to get as much time out of the 16 hours minus 8 we may get in sleep, that we forget to enjoy life, and it just passes us by day by day.

Answer 2

It's kinda scary in a way because we can say "It feels like yesterday" when it was something that happened 2 years ago, but it really feels that way.

Answer 3

yes it seems to go by fast i am 13 and feels like i only lived 4 or five years take advantage and seems to be so maybe because you live longer and you get used to time like a long drive seems forever the first time but as you do it more and more seems shorter

Answer 4

the reason the years go faster when you get older is this:

lets say your 10 years old. 1 year is 1/10 of your life. and a year goes by in .1

When your, say, 50. 1 year is 1/50 of your life.

so 1 year feels like it is .02.

so as you get older, your perception of a year gets smaller and smaller. and goes by faster.

Answer 5

Not so much but...people surely do!

Answer 6

Thats right. Neville explains it correctly. The period under consideration as a proportion of ones life to date decreases as one's life gets longer.

Answer 7

Most definitely what you say is true and my friends feel it, whether they are 30 or 70.  

People have tried to explain this using everything from logarithims to psychology--but there's no one explanation we can agree on in my vast circle, except for the truth of it, and I suspect that as of now, nobody really knows for sure.

Answer 8

Actually the opposite is proven to be true - the older you get, the slower you percieve time. Michio Kaku (theoretical physicist) did this little experiment on one episode of "Time" on the Science channel where he asked people of different ages to count 60 seconds. He found that all the younger people counted too fast (less than a minute), and all the older people counted too slow (over a minute).

Answer 9

I saw that too Maggie:) It was great but I interpreted it differently (maybe because I'm older than dirt;).

Yes the older people took longer to "count" out the minute in their heads BUT that meant that they would perceive the difference between "their" time and the world of the younger people. Because actually the "minute" in question IS a dictated (and unchanging)  BY the world and mechanically measured.

So, "real time (the worlds) would seem much faster than "their" (subjective time) and the world seems to be speeding up. And it really does. The minutes, days and years seem to speed up BECAUSE your "time" has slowed down. It really IS relative;)

Heres a link to the entire show from youtube (this guy has everything on his playlist:) The Michio Kaku one is a little more than halfway down. I'm not sure which video includes the experiment, I think maybe # 3, but they're all good. Youtube is incredible!

Answer 10

It all comes down to perceptions.

As we get older..our lives change..our routines change...and we just think more about what we need to do in life.....the next thing you know.....a lot of time has past.

When we're kids...we don't really have anything to do...except have fun.

Even though time remains constant...it's all about the perception.

Hope that helps you.

Answer 11

time has been going REAL FAST after i graduated from high school

Answer 12

YES! I am over 50 now and time just flies so fast. I am reluctant to start any job because a day doesn't seem like enough time to finish anything.

I have heard psychologists say that people perceive time as fraction of their life time, so 5 years is a lifetime to a 5 year old but only a tenth of a lifetime to me. They say asking a 5 year old to not have a snack because dinner is only one hour away is like asking me to not eat anything for 10 hours before dinner.

Answer 13

Yeah, it does for anyone I think.  Some say that a year is a smaller percentage of your life the older you get, so it seems less significant.  I also think that we get better at passing time when we get older.  When I had to work my first 8 hour shift when I was a teenager it seemed like an eternity. But I think I adjusted to it mentally and it wasn't as bad anymore.  We develop routines and rituals that make it easier to pass time.  And, who knows, maybe there is something inside of us, like our internal clock, that slows down as we get older, so the outside seems to run faster.

Answer 14

I've heard this to be true for all as they age.  There was once a theory that metabolic changes might have had something to do with our perception of time.  I don't know what became of that, but the years are flying by.

Answer 15

I am the oposite.

When I was young summers never lasted, I was always busy playing and Mom would call us in for bed in the middle of things.

As I get older the summers are longer and hotter and it seems forever between paychecks.

Answer 16

Yes it does seem that way. I think that it is because, when we are young and going through grade school, everything is changing. Our bodies, our teachers from grade to grade we watch our friends change from boys to girls to young adults. When we become adults, we settle into routines. Same job day after day and for a long while our appearance doesn't change. Because very little changes we have nothing to mark the time passing. Example: Have you ever stopped at a traffic light in your car and then you happen to focus on the car next to you and it is moving very slowly forward or backwards? Then you push on your brake because you think that you are moving but you aren't. It only seems that way until you look at other things around you. That is the way life is.

Answer 17

Yes it is sad, but it is like this, when you are ten, one year represents about 1/10th of your life experience, winter lasts forever, and so for that matter does a school day, Christmas is almost unimaginable in February, oh so distant. At fifty, a year represents 1/50th and alot has probably happened, all of a sudden you have grandkids and it seems retirement is coming too quickly!! I wonder if this contributes to the mid life crisis....

Answer 18

Yeah, when I was a kid, an hour was a day long and summer was a year.

We are taught to be time conscious because our very seconds are measured.  And our responsiblities are plugged into time slots--dead lines, remembrances, and such.

The older I get, the faster time seems to go.  At this moment in life, I think time seems faster because I've slowed down.  That's the main thing.

Nevertheless when I have a lot to do, time seems slower than when I have less to do.  During those moments, I'm more aware of each passing minute.  

Then again, if I'm lost in concentration, it's as if time has sped because I've lost track of it.

Answer 19

I'm 29, but after 25 time has whizzed by---it's scary...definitely

Answer 20

I totally know how you feel! When I was little it seemed like the summer would never end and that I had more then 2 months to do stuff, now school is almost her and I feel like i have done nothing =[ But Im soon going to Norway (where I was born) and maybe I will have happier times =] I dont know if this answered your question, but I wish you the best rest of the summer ever! xD

Answer 21

Same idea as "time flies when you're having fun" ...

The older you get, the more responsibilities and things you have to do. The busier you are, the less you pay attention to the passage of time. Before you know it, days, weeks, months have passed.