Why time speeds up with age

Abstract

In this literature review, I examine the research that seeks explanation for why children see time moving slow, while adults often say that time flies. Drawing on neurological, emotional, linguistic, and experiential factors, the study explores why children often perceive time as moving more slowly than adults. Rapid synaptogenesis, heightened neuroplasticity, and faster neural firing in childhood create detailed memories of experiences, and it leads to lengthening the feeling of time. As individuals age, increased cognitive efficiency, reduced novelty, and established routines lead to fewer memory anchors and a compressed sense of time. Language development assists children in their understanding of abstract temporal relationships. Emotional intensity and attention shape their feeling of time duration. Differences in heuristics, biological rhythms such as heart rate and metabolism, and the attentional gate model also help explain the widening gap in time perception across the lifespan. Children’s reliance on routines, emotional salience, and relational cues is very different from adults’ dependence on task-based estimation and temporal landmarks. The feeling of time passing depends on biological, cognitive, and emotional development, and it offers an insight into why childhood seems endless and adulthood seems fleeting.