Why does time seem to pass more quickly the older we become?

The Lord has a twisted sense of humor?

Watch the water in the toilet.
As it gets closer to the drain, it seems to move faster.

Because when we are 5 one year equals one fifth of our life, but when we are 50, that same year is only 1/50th of our experience.

Possibly because as we age, we are only too aware that the time remaining is less (and lessens every day).

There’s more to look back upon. When were young we don’t realize the persistence of time. The older we get the more aware we are of time passing.

I wondered this for years. I’ve also wondered if this is at all relative to needing an increased number of prescription medications and the fact that every year I seem to make more noise when I move.

Remember when summer was endless when we were in elementary school? When Christmas seemed and eternity to wait for?

It’s almost the winter holidays, again. Already!?

If time moves slowly when you’re younger, then why are you old already?

My Dad always said “Life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get towards the end, the faster it goes.”

For an extra kick, read in the voice of Forrest Gump and replace my dad with Momma.

I don’t know about others but for me it’s been lack of awareness. When I was younger it was more mindless fun. Now I have to think thing through and act on thought out situations rather than just “aw fuck whatever let’s wing it”( though that is fun to do sometimes)

We’re more aware as to what’s happening among us.

As the body and brain grow old, their processes become slower and less efficient; not, necessarily, the processes associated with conscious thought, but the deeper ones that give our thoughts context. The perceived passage of time is proportional to the amount of activity achieved by these processes; a certain amount of activity on the behalf of these processes can be thought of as a ‘tick’ in an internal clock. The ‘speed’ of external events is measured against this clock. The more that happens between ‘ticks’, the faster they appear to be happening. Thus, as the activity of the brain slows, the external time between ‘ticks’ increases, and events appear to be occurring faster. Obviously, this applies mostly in old age, and affects some more than others; the acceleration of activity that we all feel throughout our lives is due more to the fact that a given duration of time represents a smaller fraction of our total experience as we grow older, and the fact that we tend to become busier as we mature.

As you get older, you are able to visualize longer and longer time periods, because your experiences help you see and understand longer cycles.

When you have multiple plans that cover both short and longer time frames, you are constantly occupied with your many overlapping activities of life.

Then suddenly you look up and say, “Wow! Is it August already! Where did the year go?”

I can always tell when Winter is near. When the year gets to my birthday, I know it is the eighth month, and soon the precipitation will become the kind that has to be shoveled. Although, Autumn is still my favorite time of year.

Really. It hasn’t changed its pace a bit for me. Must be a relativity issue.

I agree with @Darwin, but there is also something more. It sped up even more after I became a mom. Maybe it is seeing the years I thought were so long pass by so quickly, in my eyes, for my daughter.

I am 64 and time does seem to pass quickly. I always thought it was because I am always busy whereas children don’t have much to do except count the days until Christmas or school lets out.

I didn’t realize my brain activity was slowing so dramatically that my ticks are speeding up. Jeez old age is hell.

I feel my mid life is going to pass really quickly and I am going to regret this but it is invetiable. There is always the need to work and it easily consumes 70% of my day. After age 60 onwards, I believe things will start to slow down very much.

@mea05key I have that same fear.

I think the closer we get to death (or anything we dread) the faster time will pass. Did you ever have to go for a medical procedure you did NOT want to have and also feared? Did you notice how quickly “procedure day” came around? Or even a deadline at work. When I have to do public speaking, THAT day comes around very quickly. I could only imagine how fast time passes for people on death row. It would ME.

Time flies by when we’re having fun and because we’re living life and having a blast!

@Jayne GA, but I refuse to accept an answer about aging from a teen. Just sayin’. :)

Because it’s running out.

But only to…......

Momma said life is like a box of chocolate

Because we find more to value each new day and realize we don’t have enough time to value anything fully.

Because there has been more time before it. Think about it: Between 5 and 10, a 10 year old has lived half their life, while an elderly person who is 100 lived half of their life in 50 years. One year of the 10 year old’s last half was a 10% of his or her life, while one year of the 100 year old’s second half was 1% of his or her life. It’s almost a mental trick.

Perspective?

it gets busier

more technology.
i swear the days went much slower before i had this goddamn computer. and i remembered more of them too!

@Jayne – I have thought this before also. I remember being a kid and going out for dinner at a restaurant with my parents.

I would be constantly fidgeting, acting up and bouncing around. Time took ages to receive my traffic-light drink or my curly fries. I would eat quickly and then get impatient wanting to leave.

I couldn’t understand how my parents could take so long to eat and then sit around for ages afterwards. I just wanted to go go go all the time. Even my father slowly getting up off of the sofa perplexed me. I would leap up and be bouncing and around in the time it would take for him to stand up. He would say something like “Calm down, I’m getting there. What is the rush?” I guess there was no rush but I felt like everything was so slow.

Now, as an adult, I understand! I see kids acting the same way I did… always impatient. Time took forever back then.

Joking apart, I think that time seems to pass more quickly as one ages because one knows more. Children and youth have so much to learn and do so through experience. When you are young, each experience is an event to be savoured. I remember standing in the shower, with the water running, watching a party of ants drag a dead cockroach up the wall. I must have been about 12. I also remember, at 19, teaching myself to whistle in the Botanic Gardens. That same day I tried to pursue a rain cloud across the Savannah (I had a new umbrella). Time stands still for people who are truly learning.

It doesn’t it’s just that you cant remember it going any slower.

@WhYBiRd – that is practically the same thing. Time is as much as a construct, defined by culture as it is something with objective existence. I mean, we may synchronize watches, as in an Leslie Charteris novel but for each of us the time passes at very different rates. Observe the sheep, which lives almost exclusively in the present -—-BTW, do not think of sheep as stupid, they aren’t.—- my point being that time is not real. We try to make things neat so that trains will run on time and one’s favourite TV programmes begin and end at predictable intervals; but there is a big world out there where time has little meaning.

I don’t know that it does seem to pass more quickly. Maybe you are more actively involved in your life than you were when you were younger, so instead of life happening to you, you are making your life happen?