Does Time Speed Up As We Age? Experts Explain Why Adults Often Say ‘Time Flies’

Children tend to enjoy weekends and holidays more than adults as they often feel they lack time because it flies so fast. Experts explain why adults think that way about time in contrast to children.

Adults Have Fewer Memorable Moments?

Two experts spoke about adults' perception of time and why they feel it flies fast. One probable reason is that as we become older, our lives tend to be more regimented around routines and fewer of the significant landmark events that we use to restrict distinct epochs of the "time of our lives," according to Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

She notes that adults have fewer experiences to think back on as kids. For a five-year-old, a year represents 20% of their life, filled with experiences as they learn about the world. The same period, meanwhile, represents only 2% of a 50-year-old's life, which undoubtedly has fewer novel experiences.

It appears everything blends, but Lustig emphasized that our brains aggregate comparable days and weeks. Memorable occurrences are how people measure time, but as we age, fewer and fewer of them occur. Due to this, most people can remember an action they only performed once rather than repeatedly.

Aging Brain Affects Adults' Perception of Time

Adrian Bejan of Duke University has another theory making the rounds in the scientific world. It contends that aging brains are to blame for time travel.

Bejan's research, which asserts that as we age, our perspective of life experiences may get distorted and that our brains take longer to acquire new mental images, was published in 2019. On the other side, earlier in life, the brain is better able to handle more information in a shorter amount of time, making the days seem to run much longer than they could later on.

Bejan asserts that as we age, our nerves and neurons undergo physical changes that significantly affect how we perceive time. These structures develop in complexity over time and eventually deteriorate, increasing their resistance to electrical signals. The rate at which we learn and process new information slows down, infers the researcher, because these crucial neural traits are deteriorating.

Because they are processing images more quickly than adults, infants' eyes move far more frequently than adults do, according to Bejan.

This means fewer images are processed in the sample for older people, making experiences seem to happen more quickly. Additionally, the physical changes in our nerves and neurons reportedly play a significant role in our perception of time as we age.

Lustig, however, asserts that Bejan's research is inconclusive, and the latter's study doesn't add up. She claimed that earlier in life, the brain can absorb new information in "rapid-fire," allowing it to comprehend more quickly.

Lustig also argued with his claims concerning the relationship between head size and the length of the optic nerve.

"I will let you judge whether an 80-year-old has a substantially larger head than a 25-year-old. There are other issues with his perspective, but this probably makes the point," Lustig said.

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