Does time pass faster as the years pass? This impression can be explained by several phenomena, highlighted by science.
Who never found the weather long as a child? The endless hours waiting for your parents at the school daycare, the long months waiting to celebrate your next birthday and open presents, or even the long years that separate us from the scooter we have requested many times. Conversely, time seems to inexorably speed up as the years pass. An impression that is all the stronger in pleasant moments of well-being. A concert always seems too short and the end of the holidays, for example, often comes too quickly. So how can we explain this feeling?
First element, this phenomenon corresponds to a reality now well described: this impression that time passes faster today than in our childhood is not a fantasy, but a real sensation. What is it due to?
Science highlights this: we have a less hectic life as we age. And this, in spite of ourselves. In our youth, we experience a multitude of new and significant events which diminish year after year. Having fewer significant experiences over several years skews our perception of time as we age, and therefore gives us the impression that time passes faster as we age. Especially since a significant event during childhood takes up “a lot of space” or rather time in the totality of the past life. From this perspective, time experienced is relative.
Let’s take an example to illustrate this phenomenon and put it more simply. For a 5 year old child, a year represents 20% of their life, including an impressive amount of discoveries and new experiences. Everything that happens there seems a long time considering what he has already experienced! This famous year only represents 2% of the life of a 50-year-old person. A fantastic summer, a sublime trip or a snow vacation are a longer life experience for a child than for an adult. The transformations and changes and reforms are less for an adult than for a child.
But that’s not all, the notion of time passing is also linked to the aging of our brain, even beyond the theory of significant events. According to a study conducted by Duke University in 2019, the older our brain gets, the less effective it responds. So, he processes the information received differently compared to his younger years. Hence the tendency of older people to perceive time differently.
“Mind time is a sequence of images, that is, reflections of nature fueled by stimuli from the sense organs. The rate at which changes in mental images are perceived decreases with age due to several physical characteristics that change with age: the frequency of saccades, the size of the body, the degradation of the pathways” indicates researcher Adrian Bejan, in a study published in theEuropean Review .
De facto, it is possible to “trick” our brain and stimulate it further, and at any age. Stimulating your brain by teaching it new cooking recipes or developing new skills such as practicing a previously unknown sport allows you to create new lasting memories. A mechanism that can allow you to stretch time and have the impression that time passes more slowly today.