Is Time Speeding Up? Here's What Science Says | Make This Make Sense

Why Time Seems to Speed Up as We Age

The video explores why childhood summers can feel long while years in adulthood seem to pass quickly. It distinguishes between two aspects of time perception:

• Time in the moment: How long an experience feels while it is happening. Waiting without distraction can feel slow, while an enjoyable activity may seem to pass quickly.
• Time in memory: How long a period seems when we look back. The brain reconstructs the past rather than recording it like a camera, and repetitive periods may blur together.

Explanations and Findings

Time-proportionality theory

A year may seem more significant when it makes up a larger share of a person’s life. For example, one year is 10% of a 10-year-old’s life but 2% of a 50-year-old’s.

The video notes that this is an intuitive explanation, not a demonstrated mechanism in which the brain literally calculates those proportions.

Novelty and memory

New experiences can create distinct, memorable landmarks. A busy vacation may pass quickly in the moment but feel substantial in retrospect. By contrast, a routine month may feel ordinary as it happens and later seem compressed.

Event boundaries

The brain organizes continuous experience into scenes or events. When days are similar, it may group them together; periods with distinct changes are easier to remember as separate events.

COVID lockdowns

A British study found that more than 80% of respondents felt time passed differently during lockdown. Lockdown often felt slow while people were living through repetitive days, yet the period could seem compressed in retrospect. A French research team surveyed people during lockdown and again two years later, reporting this contrast.

Limits of the memory explanation

One study found that recalling more important events from the previous five years did not consistently predict whether people felt those years had passed faster or slower. Memory likely matters, but it may not explain the whole effect.

Judgments of short intervals

In a study of 233 people asked to signal when two minutes had passed, participants under 30 waited an average of about 115 seconds, while those over 50 waited about 87 seconds. This suggests age can affect judgments of short intervals, but it does not prove that an older person’s life literally feels faster.

Conclusion

The video rejects simulation-theory and CERN-related explanations as unsupported conspiracy theories. It concludes that there is no known way to literally slow life down, but adding new experiences and breaking routines may give the brain more distinct memories to preserve.

Researchers and Sources Featured

• No individual researchers are named.
• A study of 499 people aged 14–94 on perceptions of long periods of life.
• An unnamed study comparing young and older people’s judgments of time in everyday life.
• An unnamed British study on time perception during COVID lockdowns.
• An unnamed French research team that surveyed people during lockdown and again two years later.
• An unnamed study on memories of significant events over the previous five years.
• An unnamed study of 233 people estimating a two-minute interval.
• Psychologists and philosophers, whose discussions of time-proportionality are described as dating back to the 1800s.