Why does time "accelerate" when we grow older?

When a person is still in childhood, it seems to him that summer vacations last for an eternity, and the length of time between one New Year celebration and another simply reminds infinity. Nevertheless, when we get older, it begins to seem that weeks, and even months, and even entire seasons, disappear from the calendar at breakneck speed. How does this happen? Does perception change - or does life really get faster?

The answer to the mysterious question

Almost all people note that time really starts to move faster with age. But the point is not that adult life is filled with a multitude of responsible tasks and problems. Studies have shown that the matter is in the psychological perception of time, which appears to older people differently. That's why it seems that life is becoming more and more tense and fast. There are several different theories trying to explain why the perception of time varies with age.

The first theory

According to one opinion, the time starts to move faster with age due to the gradual change in the internal biological clock. When a person grows old, his metabolism gradually slows down, and with it the heart rate decreases, and breathing slows down. The child has very different biological clocks that move faster. They experience more biological markers of time - breaths, heart beats - over the same period of time that makes them feel this gap as longer.

The second theory

There is another opinion. According to this theory, the speed with which we take a piece of time is related to how much new information we get. When the brain receives a large number of new stimuli, the processing of information takes more time, as a result, it seems that the days are becoming longer. In addition, this theory fully corresponds to situations before the catastrophe, when people describe that time seemed to move at a slow pace. The frightening and unusual circumstances gave the brain so much information that time simply froze.

Experimental confirmation of the theory

The second theory can be confirmed by the fact that, when faced with an unusual situation, the brain is forced to record more extensive and detailed information. As a result, in our memories, what seems to be happening is longer than it actually was. This theory was confirmed experimentally. Subjects experienced a feeling of free fall, as a result of which their perception of time really changed - this is the body's reaction to unusual conditions for it. But what is the connection between such an explanation and the fact that we see time differently, grow old?

Development of the assumption

The fact is that with age, we better study the environment. It becomes completely familiar, and attention is no longer concentrated on every detail of the home environment or workplace. For the child, the world is a platform full of new impressions and new experiences. As a result, he has to spend more mental energy in order to rework the impressions from the world around him. According to this theory, childhood impressions slow time, and the routine of adult life, on the contrary, makes it more fleeting. The more we get used to the peculiarities of our daily life, the faster it passes. In addition, this theory is confirmed by biochemical mechanisms. There is an assumption that the level of dopamine helps us determine the length of time. After twenty years, the amount of dopamine in the body gradually decreases, resulting in time starts to move faster. Nevertheless, this does not explain the reason that time really accelerates - in the mathematical sense. The decrease in the duration of a fixed period of time with age can be explained logarithmically. The logarithmic measurement is also used for earthquake measurements - a scale scale is required that is more linear than linear. This is also true for time.

Logarithmic approach

Logarithmic measurements push to the idea that the perception of a period of time is related to how much time has already been lived up to this gap. As a result, it turns out that for a two-year-old child a year is half the life lived. It is not surprising that this period of time seems so long. Therefore, each birthday has to wait for months in the childhood. However, already in ten years a year - only ten percent of life. For a twenty-year-old, five percent. To feel the same time as a two-year-old lives for a year, the twenty-year-old must wait a decade already. If you use this approach, it no longer seems surprising that with time, time is accelerating. Most adults think about their lives on a scale of decades, which implies the same attitude to an equal period of time. Nevertheless, with a logarithmic approach, each period of time is perceived in different ways. According to this theory, the time from five years to ten is the time from ten to twenty, from twenty to forty, from forty to eighty. It sounds pretty depressing, if you think about it - five years of childhood are equal to forty years of adulthood! In a word, learn to appreciate your time. It moves faster and faster every day, even if you do not believe in the theory that explains this phenomenon.