It’s Not Just You, Time Really Does Fly as We Age

If you’re in your twilight years, or even just your mid-40s, you’ve probably noticed that time seems to move faster than it used to. When you were younger, a minute could feel like an hour and an hour like days. Now that you’ve got some experience under your belt, and you’re trying to savor every last second you’ve got left, time, quite cruelly, seems to be accelerating at a breakneck speed. Well, some new research is finally shedding light on why it feels as though time moves faster as we age.

Turns out there’s not just one root cause but several working in concert. It’s everything from the distractions of the modern world to the routines we adopt as we get older to changes in how our brains process information.

A researcher from Duke University named Adrian Bejan thinks physical changes in our brains slow down the processing of sensory information over time. As we age, our brain’s ability to generate mental images from this sensory information starts to diminish.

Younger people process images a lot faster which makes time feel slower. It’s like how when The Flash moves really fast everyone else moves really slow, but The Flash is your brain. As you get older and your processing speeds slow down, time appears to pass more quickly.

So that’s what’s physically going on in your brain. As mentioned, there are other factors at play, like the routines of life. A psychology professor at the University of Michigan name Cindy Lustig says older people experience fewer novel events than younger people.

When every day is pretty much the same, it all starts to blend together. Without milestones to break up your days, the human brain has a hard time differentiating one day from the next, which can make time feel like it’s just flying by.

Finally, the addictive nature of social media can make long periods seem like no time whatsoever. Social media platforms are almost dangerously optimized for addiction, to the point where people can lose so much time in them that it starts to affect their sleep, cognitive functions, and even their perception of time.