Why time goes by more quickly as we age

When we were children, the summer holidays seemed to last forever, and the wait between Christmas’ felt like an eternity.

So why is it that when we get older, the time just seems to zip by, with weeks, months, and entire seasons disappearing from a blurred calendar at dizzying speed

This apparently accelerated time travel is not a result of filling our adult lives with grown-up responsibilities and worries. Research does in fact seem to show that perceived time moves more quickly for older people, making our lives feel busy and rushed.

There are several hypotheses which attempt to explain why our perception of time speeds up as we get older. One idea is a gradual alteration of our internal biological clocks. The slowing of our metabolism as we get older matches the slowing of our heartbeat and our breathing.

Children’s biological pacemakers beat more quickly, meaning that they experience more biological markers (heartbeats, breaths) in a fixed period of time, making it feel like more time has passed.

Another hypothesis suggests that the passage of time we perceive is related to the amount of new perceptual information we absorb. With lots of new stimuli, our brains take longer to process the information so that the period of time feels longer.

This would help to explain the ‘slow motion perception’ often reported in the moments before an accident. The unfamiliar circumstances mean there is so much new information to take in.

In fact, it may be that when faced with new situations our brains record more richly detailed memories, so that it is our recollection of the event that appears slower rather than the event itself. This has been shown to be the case experimentally for subjects experiencing free fall.

But how does this explain the continuing shortening of perceived time as we age The hypothesis goes that the older we get, the more familiar we become with our surroundings. We don’t notice the detailed environments of our homes and workplaces.