# Why does time speed up as we age?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-time-speed-up-as-we-age/343244>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 6, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-time-speed-up-as-we-age/343244 "2006-02-06T16:18:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-time-speed-up-as-we-age/343244/41 "2006-02-13T01:49:59Z")

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> [@FlyingRamenMonster](#):
>
> It’s like this.
> 
> When you’re young, people want to know how old you are. Those birthday cards with ages printed on the front, they go up to 21. After that they start going up by decades, people stop caring, it becomes harder to tell your age by looking at you and so on. You get divided into grades based on age but gradually… age stops mattering, you start getting more variance and by the time you enter the workforce you’re surrounded by people of ALL ages. It is like you have little slots in your life labelled 1, 2, 3, … 19, 20, 21, adult. And adulthood loses its novelty after a while so things start going faster.

Well, age does and doesn’t matter I suppose. Really it goes 1,2,3…19,20,21, 30, 40, etc. 20 Somethings are, in fact, treated differently from 30 Somethings.

I would say another reason time seems to speed up as you get older is that a large part of your day is spent busy at work. Young people tend to have a lot more idle time and that tends to make the days drag a bit.

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