Why Does Time Pass More Slowly in Youth?

[Hi, potential reader. It’s February 2023 and I’ve decided that this essay (and its companion piece) is long past due for edits. I hope to get to these soon. In the meantime, I suggest reading anything above these two pieces or, looking below, the essay on nondualism, simulation theory, or luck and the meaning of life.]

“Oh, when I look back now that summer seemed to last forever.”—Bryan Adams, Summer of ‘69

Time in Hindsight

In my last essay, I tried to explain why time seems to accelerate as we grow older. In short, I said that as age leaves us with more memories, we inevitably cycle through the same ones less often. Children might revisit the same memory every few days or weeks, whereas adults might do so only every few years. In adulthood, therefore, more time passes between the recollection of specific events, giving us more opportunities to be surprised by the passage of time.

Conventional explanations have long recognized that this effect has more to do with hindsight than actual experience. But such explanations still, to my mind, miss the mark. They usually focus on issues like the length of a year relative to childhood versus adulthood, or the (allegedly) greater accumulation of memories during novel experiences. As far as I know, they’ve overlooked how the rate of recall of events—which is more frequent in childhood than adulthood—changes our perception of time.

Long Vacations & Longer Summers

After writing that essay I was talking with my father, who said that my explanation left him wanting. Although I’d explained why time passes differently upon reflection, I hadn’t explained why it sometimes passes differently in the moment. For instance, why did summers seem so long as kids, but so short now? Summer weeks used to drag on in the sweetest possible way, as we lived with no responsibilities, serving only our next whim or desire.

One might be tempted to explain the endless summers of childhood as simply another illusion of hindsight, but this seems unlikely because even as adults we experience a similar slowing of time, if only now and again. For example, although vacations pass too quickly in retrospect, we often feel an expansion of time in the moment. A week on vacation tends to feel longer than one in the office even though, upon returning, we feel like we never left. For this reason, this effect—in which time elongates in the moment but not upon reflection—has become known as the Holiday Paradox.

Most people say that the Holiday Paradox is caused by novelty. On vacation, the regular routine of the workweek gets upended by new, unpredictable experiences, which disorient our usual way of tracking time. Other people say that these novel experiences lead to more new memories, making vacations feel longer than workaday existence.

Such explanations have merit, because novelty undoubtedly affects our perception of time. Anyone who has ever found a new running loop knows that the first time around always feels the longest. Run it repeatedly and it seems much shorter. But novelty alone cannot account for the Holiday Paradox or endless summers—something more is at play.

Growing up, I spent my summers doing virtually the same thing every day: waking just before noon, cycling to the country club, playing tennis for a few hours, playing ball tag for an hour or two, playing tennis for a few hours more, then cycling home. Yet despite this strict routine, the summers seemed as long as the days were warm. To be sure, no two games of tennis or ball tag were alike, but the summers of childhood past held nowhere near the novelty of, say, a European vacation or South American road trip. Despite their relative lack of novelty, however, the summers passed slowly—at least until September rudely returned.

This raises the question: if novelty doesn’t slow down our moment-to-moment perception of time, what does? Is there some common thread between the Holiday Paradox of our present and the endless summers of our past that can explain why the gears of time occasionally stall out?

Although novelty itself does not slow down time—just think of the rapid pace of a workweek loaded with new assignments—it can, in certain contexts, bring on a childlike state of mind. And as children, almost everything seemed longer, be it a drive in the car, a week at school, or the excruciating wait until Christmas.

As I’ll explain, two key traits—both of which are affected by novelty—lie behind the disconnect between child-time and adult-time. The first trait is our relation to desire, the second our quality of attention.

Dictated by Desire

Desire determines the quality of our lives, often in ways unseen. So subtle a mover is desire that we frequently mistake its influence, which is foisted upon us, for the free choice of an inner self. But there is no such thing as an unconstrained self, free to do as it wants, because desire dictates what we want, yet we do not choose our desires. And in the rare cases where we manage to change our wants—such as breaking an addiction or other bad habit—we only do so because we desired a change in the first place. In this way, we are both victims and beneficiaries of desire.

Without desire, we would not be the species we are today. Our tastes in art, food, friends, lovers, careers and pastimes are all, at base, the products of desires instilled in us by the vagaries of evolutionary history. (Another term for this suite of desires, and the behaviours and competencies that follow, is human nature.) Just as these desires shape our relation to pleasure, pain, and everything in between, so too they shape our perception of time.

Children often want time to speed up whereas adults wish it would slow down. This is the main reason why time passes differently for children than for adults.

Wanting the Future

Compared with adults, children have few responsibilities and are drunk with desire for the future. As kids, there was always something to look forward to. The most urgent matters in our lives weren’t deadlines and credit card bills, but the next birthday, video game release, or soccer match. For our childhood selves, the fruits of the future couldn’t come quickly enough. Faced with a pressing impatience for the future, who among us didn’t fantasize about freezing themselves, warping through time, or sleeping away the months until Christmas or their next birthday?

As children, the time between exciting events was an unimportant interlude with few obligations. Because we wanted less time, it always felt like we had too much of it. I remember when, before turning eleven, I asked for the new Game Boy Advance. The system came out five months before my birthday, so I didn’t need to wait all that long (and I wasn’t exactly deprived in the meantime). But those five months were excruciating. Had I been given the option to sacrifice five months of my life to have my Game Boy then and there, I surely would have done so. In fact, I likely would have sacrificed much more.

In childhood, the future rarely comes quickly enough, making the present seem drawn out. And because the enjoyment of being a child is frustrated by a lack of freedom, children often wish to be older. Grown-ups have the autonomy to eat junk food, play video games, drive cars, have sex, and buy alcohol (and now marijuana) to their heart’s content; to someone stuck in youth, this can sound like pure Bacchanalian delight. As a result, the desire to grow up can loom over a young person, constantly reminding them how slowly time passes.

Compare this to adulthood, where the delights of freedom are regularly interrupted by serious responsibilities. As adults, we still have exciting events to look forward to, but the intervening time is filled with insistent demands. These demands take time, which is now in short supply, making us wish for more. This cycle makes it seem like we never have enough: we want more time, so it feels like we have less.

A child’s perception of time is analogous to a boring day in the classroom. The teacher drones on while the clock turns too slowly, holding one back from whatever awaits on the other side of the final bell. An adult’s perception of time is analogous to a day in the classroom spent writing exams. Where every hour was once an eternity, each now seems a mere fifteen minutes, as one races against time to the end of the test. This is true even if one has great plans upon release; test time is such a precious resource that one wants more of it, not less.

In adulthood, responsibilities often feel like they’re caving in on us and with them, our felt sense of time. But by setting our responsibilities aside, we can temporarily slow down the clock. This is what happens on vacation, where a change in habit and setting distracts us from the constraints of daily life. Vacations promise a future filled with joy, without tiresome responsibilities to get in the way. Life on vacation is therefore similar to life as a child, where our needs are taken care of, freeing us to focus more on our wants.

Dropping Distraction

Desire plays a leading role in our perception of time but it does not set the whole stage. Desire is simply one possible manifestation of human attention, and how we use attention is how we live our lives.

At base, attention can be applied in one of two ways: with awareness or distraction. When lost in desire, as children or adults, we are lost in distraction. In looking forward to the future or craving more time now, we’re rarely fully aware of the present. Thus, the wants of a child and the needs of an adult affect the flow of time by distracting us with thoughts. But there are times where we are undistracted (by desire or otherwise) and free to notice more of what’s happening. And the more we notice, the more time seems to slow down. This mental state—characterized by greater awareness of the present—comes more naturally to children than adults.

Aware of the Present

As children, we think less and notice more. Our prefrontal cortices, which are responsible for complex cognition, are underdeveloped, and we haven’t yet mastered language. Eventually, neurotic thoughts will come to dominate experience, but until then children inhabit a world where sensory experience burns brightly (notwithstanding the fact that children can give in to neuroticism, like me with my Game Boy Advance). Children pick up important traits like language and motor skills not because they incessantly think about them, but because they are so good at paying attention to the world around them.

As we age, thoughts come to plaster over awareness. School teaches us how to think, responsibilities force us to plan ahead, and work largely consists of cognitive tasks. Modern life rarely demands that we pay attention to our senses; we can cross the street, ride the bus, or drive to work lost in a mixture of autopilot and thoughts. Where our ancestors had to read the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of flora, fauna, landscapes and weather patterns, we can order McDonald’s online and vegetate on YouTube until it arrives.

In a Faustian bargain, adults have traded awareness of the present moment for the power to think. Now, thought so thoroughly dominates our world that we rarely notice when we’re thinking, mistaking our own thoughts for reality.[1] In other words, age coerces us into trading awareness for neuroticism. And for the neurotic, there is never enough time.

When we are aware of the moment—as children—time seems more expansive. When aggressively pursuing thoughts—as adults—time seems truncated. This difference can be best understood with a few examples from everyday experience.

Think of a time when you were unable to sleep but were otherwise at ease. Other than the faint desire to sleep, you just lay there, mind pleasantly placid. On such nights time drags on as you listen to the hum of the refrigerator, the odd passing car and, eventually, the chirping of birds as night blurs into day. Awareness prolongs the moment, often for the better.

Contrast this with a night spent browsing the internet. You know that you should really go to sleep, but decide to check out just one more YouTube video or Instagram before bed. What was supposed to be a minor diversion has turned into something much more serious, and before you know it an hour or two have already passed, your tiredness now supplanted by mild agitation. Distraction has a way of making time fly, often for the worse.[2]

If any readers have ever been on a meditation retreat, they are familiar with how awareness widens time. After a few days on retreat the mind settles down, and with it the flow of time. Breaks that had previously seemed too short now pass slowly, forty-five minutes sometimes feeling like two hours.

Awareness also plays a role in prolonging the feeling of vacations. In a new environment our minds are drawn to our surroundings, rooting us in our senses and the moment. For instance, has a friend ever driven you through their neighbourhood, and you’ve remarked upon a house or other feature that they’d never noticed, but which struck you as completely obvious? Because your friend was familiar with the scene, they could navigate it subconsciously whereas you, being unfamiliar, noticed much more. On vacation we can’t help but be drawn to our senses, because we need sights, sounds, and smells to navigate exotic lands, food, and circumstances. This tempers our thoughts, clearing room in our minds for time to blossom.

A Call to Attention

To recap, the following are the main reasons that time passes more slowly in youth: Children want the future now, whereas adults consistently need just a bit more time before its arrival. For children time is a surplus; for adults it’s a deficit. In addition, children are more in touch with their senses and the world around them—and the more awareness we bring to the present, the slower time passes.

Many of us wish that we could slow down the clock yet do nothing towards this end. If we hope to recapture some of the length of youth, there’s a simple place to start: pay attention. Every time we idly check our phones while crossing the street, browse Reddit when we could read a book, or check Amazon just to see if there’s something worth wanting, we are missing out on an awareness of the present. In so doing, we’re failing to prolong the feeling of life.

[1] Unfortunately, cell phones, the internet, and tablets at the dinner table are likely severing children’s awareness of their senses earlier than ever.

[2] People with ADD/ADHD are known for being chronically late. I wonder whether, because they are easily distracted, time passes more quickly for them which contributes to their lateness.