Table of contents:
- Why does time fly by when I get older?
- 1. The body's biological clock changes
- 2. Getting used to the environment
"Wow, today is Monday again, huh? Time flies so fast! " You must have experienced moments like this. Without feeling the time a day, a week, a month, up to a year just passed. Even though it seems that I last saw the calendar, yesterday was still Wednesday or Thursday.
Whereas when you were a child, time seemed very slow. You keep looking forward to school holidays. Even when there is a plan for the sake of traveling with school friends, you feel that the day will never come.
However, as you get older, you feel that time flies quickly. How did this phenomenon happen, huh? Check out the answer below!
Why does time fly by when I get older?
Basically, the course of time will remain the same no matter what. It's just that humans have a special way of perceiving time. Experts have come up with two strong theories that could explain why time flies by increasing age. This is the explanation of the two theories.
1. The body's biological clock changes
You have your own system so that all bodily functions run smoothly, even without your need to control it. For example respiration, heart rate, and blood flow. All of these systems are regulated by a biological clock. The control center of the biological clock itself is in the brain, precisely by the suprachiasmatic nerve (SCN).
In a child's biological clock, there is more physical activity that lasts over a period of time. Numerous studies have found that in a minute, for example, children display a greater number of heartbeats and breaths than adults. As you get older, the physical activity that occurs within a minute will decrease.
Because the adult's biological clock is more relaxed, you also find that time flies. For example, in a minute a child's heart beats 150 times. Whereas in a minute an adult's heart may beat only 75 times. This means that it will take an adult two minutes to reach the same number of heartbeats as it was when you were a child. So, even though the time has elapsed for two minutes, your brain thinks it's still one minute because it only took you a minute to reach 150 heartbeats.
2. Getting used to the environment
The second theory deals with memory and how the brain processes the information received. As a child, the world was a very interesting place and full of new experiences. You seem thirsty to absorb a variety of information that was unthinkable before. Life seems unpredictable and you are free to do anything.
This of course changes when you reach adulthood. The world is predictable and offers no new experiences anymore. Everyday you also live through your normal routine from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night. You know that you have to go to school, find a job, maybe start a family, and eventually retire. In addition, the variety of information you receive should not be surprising because you have learned a lot. For example, you know that cloudy means that you want rain.
When receiving stimuli (information) by learning new things, the brain will process harder to understand and store them in memory. This process certainly takes time and effort. So, it seems as if the time rotates longer when you are small and receive a lot of new stimuli. Meanwhile, entering your 20s, you rarely receive stimuli, so you feel that time flies.
