“Can you believe it’s nearly September already?”
When you are a kid, time seems to go at a regular if not slightly snail-like pace.
You start school in September, and Christmas is aaaaaages away. Then when the summer holidays finally roll on, they feel as long as the school year.
Good times.
But as you get older you start to feel like everything passes by very quickly, Summer is over before you know it, and Facebook Memories pop up to remind you that that day out you had with your friends was already a year ago.
So why does it feel like the time passes at a quicker pace as you get older?
According to Independent.co.uk there are a few theories about why this may be.
One of the suggestions is that our heartbeat and breathing slows down when our metabolism does. Children’s heartbeat and breathing is quicker, which makes it feel like more time has passed.
Another theory suggests that the way we measure and feel time passing is based on the amount of new information we absorb. It seems that when our brains need to absorb new information it records it in more rich detail than it does with things we already knew.
Via Giphy
Considering that children probably experience a lot more ‘first’ times and new experiences, their brains probably absorb a lot more memories of things like summer holidays and Christmas breaks, because, as adults, there are not many new moments and realisations.
Now for the science bit.
The biochemical mechanism behind the theory above seems to be that the release of neurotransmitter dopamine (which controls the flow of information from other areas of the brain) helps us to learn to measure time.
Via Tumblr
After we turn 20 and continue to age, dopamine levels are reduced, making time appear to run faster.
So in short, kids are curious and absorb their surrounding a lot more. They take notice of new things in more depth. Adults, however, don’t register things like children do, due to a combination of neuroscience and the fact that we don’t experience new things as often.
So if you wan’t time to slow down, do loads of new things.
Although the saying says ‘time flies when you’re having fun’, it seems that it’s going to pass very quickly regardless of what you do, but making new memories could help.
