How come as I get older time seems to go quicker?

Question

When I was a kid, the summer holidays for example seemed to last forever, now 6 weeks goes by in no time.
Lessons at school would last 45 mins and would seem to drag on, 45 minutes is an insignificant amount of time to me now. Does our perception of time increase exponentionally as we grow older?

Answer 1

You can take it from an old codger like me. Time seems to gather momentum at you get older.

Answer 2

I can think of two possible reasons.

Firstly, the older we get the more stuff we have to pack into each day so we are always chasing time. It will be interesting to note that when we become very old if time goes slower again as we are unable to fill our days with things to do so much,

Secondly. Six weeks to a child is a signifiacnt time period in the time they have lived. As an adult 6 weeks becomes much less of a proprtion as years go by and thus the time percentage lessens.

So based on your question I'd say answer 2 is the likeliest and thus, yes, it is exponentional.

Answer 3

Time does not go faster as you get older. The only way time can go faster is if you were traveling in a spaceship near the speed of light, but even then YOU would not perceive time to go faster, but the people on Earth who watched you fly by in your spaceship.

However, you may perceive time to move faster as you get older simply because you are now becoming more engaged with your surroundings as you grow older. You will busier noticing and learning things around you than when you were a child and preoccupied with only what was not real and simply what came from your mind like imaginary friends and the moon landing.

Answer 4

There is actually a scientific reason for this.

There is an endorphin, or hormone... or one of these chemicals released into the blood, that is released into the brain on boredom and imminant danger.
It makes the brain work furiously quicker, and because of it, time appears to slow down.

As a child, you are bored more easily, so days seem longer, even though you get up later and go to bed earlier making them shorter.

As an adult, boredom seldom sets in as you always have something to do, and more often than children find things interesting and worthy of your time. Therefore the chimcal is not released into your brain and time just flies by.

Answer 5

You're not kidding, I am 45 years of age and wondering what happened to the last twenty years!?

It's like falling into a coma at 21 years of age and waking up twenty years later!

In truth I suppose it feels this way because many of us are dissatisfied with our lives, we tend to 'blank out' unhappy memories and only remember the 'good times'.

It seems that only when we get older that we learn to slow down and enjoy each day for what it is.... 'youth is wasted on the young' seems very true to me now.

So young or old...go for it!, live your life as though there is no tomorrow...because one day, you'll be right.............

Answer 6

It likely has a lot to do with the fact that as a child you neither abusively drank alcohol, nor injested copious amounts of drugs in order to fill those carefree days.

Answer 7

I agree, not only do small amounts of time fly by but months seem like nothing! Maybe cus im always waiting for pay day!

Answer 8

For most people, time does seem to fly by as we get older. But if you pay attention and fill your time up with things to do and new things to learn, time will slow down and you'll get better value from it.

Answer 9

Your days are no longer carefree anymore and we never seem to have enough time to stop and think as we did when we were children and that is why time flys.....

Answer 10

This is best illustrated with a ball of string. Think of your life as the ball unravelling, each revolutions signifies a year. At first revolutions take a long time but as the ball gets smaller they speed up.