Why Does Time Pass More Slowly in Youth?

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

“Now nothing seems as strange as when the leaves began to change or how we thought those days would never end.”—Kid Rock, All Summer Long

Time in Hindsight

In another essay, I explained why time seems to accelerate with age—and why the usual explanations are incomplete.

To recap:

1. As we grow older, we form more memories.
2. With more memories to choose from, we revisit any single memory less often.
3. Therefore, more time passes between our recollections of specific events.
4. This gap gives adults more opportunities to be surprised by the passage of time.

For instance, a child might recall a favourite concert every few days (they don’t have many to choose from). An adult, by contrast, might think of the same concert only every few years. The child’s frequent recollections continuously reorient them—perhaps every day or so—to the passage of time. For the adult who hasn’t thought of that concert in ages, though, it’s as if years have suddenly passed.

Time in the Moment

After reading my essay, my dad said it left him wanting. I’d explained why time passes differently upon reflection, but not in the moment. For instance, why did summers seem so long as kids yet so short now?

Could the endless summers of childhood be purely an illusion of hindsight? This seems unlikely, because we construct time retrospectively and in each moment. Consider vacations. Once they’re done, time passed too quickly; but while we’re in them, time seems to expand. A week on vacation feels longer than one in the office even if, upon returning, we feel like we never left.

Some people argue that I’ve got it backwards: vacations pass quickly in the moment but seem long in hindsight.[1] They attribute this to novelty, claiming that it stretches retrospective time (with an expanse of new memories) but compresses it in the moment (with a flurry of fresh stimulation).

Novelty undoubtedly affects how we perceive time in the moment. But novelty alone does not stretch or compress time. When I find a new running loop—filled with novel stimuli—the first time around always feels the longest. But when I’m hit with novel requests at work, time flies. Both situations involve novelty, but time passes differently in each.

So if novelty doesn’t determine our moment-to-moment perception of time, what does?

More than anything else, our felt sense of time is shaped by two things: desire and attention.

Wanting the Future

Desire drives our lives, often in ways unseen. We typically assume that we choose our thoughts and actions. But much of the time, desire chooses for us. And we do not choose our desires, for desire—like everything—arises naturally from impersonal conditions.[2]

Desire shapes our relationship to pleasure, pain, and everything in between. So, too, it shapes our perception of time. Children want time to speed up whereas adults wish it would slow down. This is a key reason time passes differently for them.

As kids, we always had something to look forward to. Instead of deadlines and mortgage payments, we had birthdays, sporting events, and new video games. Because we wanted time to move faster, it always felt like we had too much. I frequently fantasized about freezing myself or entering a comatose state to skip the interminable waits between exciting events.

Compare this to adulthood, where time is in shorter supply. Adults want more time—between shifts, family demands, or credit card bills—so it constantly feels like we have too little. To a child, time passes like a boring day in class: the teacher drones on, the clock ticks too slowly, and we languish in time’s abundance. To an adult, existence can be like an exam session: the hours flow by like minutes, a precious resource slipping away.

Aware of the Present

When lost in desire, we are lost in thoughts—whether craving the future or grasping for more time. And, as we’ve seen, the nature of these thoughts shapes our sense of time.

But there are moments when we are undistracted, where thoughts don’t obscure the felt reality of our being. In these moments, attention is freed from demands and obligations. And to a free, undistracted attention, time seems to slow down. This mental state—characterized by a greater awareness of the present—comes more naturally to children than to adults.

As children, we thought less and noticed more. Our prefrontal cortices (responsible for complex cognition) were underdeveloped, and we hadn’t yet mastered language. As a result, sensory experience burned brightly. By noticing experience clearly, without excessive mental chatter or self-reference, we absorbed language and motor skills with ease. Without thoughts in the way, we learned by simply existing.

As adults, though, we often live one thought removed from reality.[3]

School taught us how to parrot thoughts in exchange for praise. Puberty—compounded by social media—painted a fragile self-portrait into our minds. And now, many of us work, play, and socialize in a disembodied online realm that has overwhelmed and confused us (and corroded the veneer of civilization in the process).

Adults have made a Faustian bargain, trading awareness of the present moment for the power to think. And this thinking is often stressful. In this way, we’ve traded peace for neuroticism. And for the neurotic, there is rarely enough time.

When we are aware of what’s happening, time seems expansive. When we’re harried by thoughts, time seems to truncate. A few examples help illustrate this.

Have you ever been lying down, senses at ease in your body, with no obligations disturbing your mind? During such interludes, I find that time passes so slowly that twenty minutes can feel like a full hour, and I surface refreshed. Awareness can prolong the moment, often for the better.

Contrast this with a night spent scrolling. At some level, you know you should stop, but you don’t. What began as a quick diversion—“just checking Instagram before bed”—stretches into an hour or more. You’re left agitated, and not even sure how time slipped away. Distraction can make time fly, often for the worse.

Readers who have been on meditation retreats know how awareness stretches time. Nowhere do days feel longer than under the expanded awareness of retreat.

Awareness also plays a role in prolonging the feeling of vacations. The novelty of vacations draws attention to our surroundings, rooting us more in our senses. This effect also occurs when friends drive me through their neighbourhoods for the first time. I’ll sometimes comment on an interesting house or bit of landscaping—which they’ve never noticed. Because they are so familiar with the area, they navigate it on autopilot, paying little attention to their surroundings. On vacation, every area is like the new neighbourhood: our autopilot is not yet trained, so we need sights, sounds, and smells to navigate exotic cityscapes, foods, and experiences.

Sensory awareness tempers thoughts, clearing room in our minds for time to bloom.

A Call to Attention

As we age, life feels ever more fleeting. We often feel powerless to slow down the clock, but there’s a simple place to start: pay attention. Whenever we idly check our phones, browse Reddit to fill a spare moment, or open Amazon just to see if there’s anything worth wanting, we lose awareness of what’s actually happening. And in doing so, we fail to prolong how we experience time.

[1] To be fair, when I go on vacation I like to take it easy. This could explain why I perceive them differently.

[2] 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.

[3] Unfortunately, endemic screen use is likely severing children’s sensory awareness earlier than ever.