In childhood, almost every day brings something new — and the brain carefully preserves these impressions
Summer in childhood seemed endless — from the first day of vacation to the school backpack, it felt like a whole lifetime had passed. In adulthood, it’s the opposite: you barely find your sunglasses before August is already over. Time perception researchers explain that it’s not just about nostalgia — the child’s brain truly perceived time differently, and the reasons are now well understood.
How the Brain Perceives Time and the Duration of Events
When we look back on a period of life, the sense of how long it lasted depends not on the calendar, but on how many distinct moments we remember from it. This is the key idea developed by Marc Wittmann — a time perception researcher at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg (Germany) and author of the book “Felt Time,” in which he explores the mystery of subjective time. Essentially, it all comes down to human memory and how it selects important events.
The principle works simply: new, unusual, unexpected experiences — things that catch the brain off guard — are remembered best of all. The more such “bright spots” in memory for a given period, the longer it seems in retrospect. In childhood, there are an enormous number of such spots, because practically everything happens for the first time.
As Wittmann explains, a first horseback ride, a first trip to the beach, a first visit to the circus — all of these are “first times,” and the brain records each such moment as something special. That’s exactly why three months of summer vacation in childhood seemed to contain more events than an entire adult year.
Teenage summer — a time of changes not only around you, but within
Why Time Drags Slowly in Childhood and Feels Longer
It’s not just about the novelty of experiences. There’s another important factor: the child’s brain itself is rapidly changing. A child doesn’t just gain new experience — they process it through a nervous system that noticeably differs from the previous year’s version.
According to Wittmann, every year for a child and teenager is literally a new year, because numerous physical and psychological changes are taking place. Every year, a child is essentially a new person. All these changes in the brain help anchor new experiences in memory even more firmly.
The result is a double effect: both the external world is full of novelty, and the internal “instrument” for perceiving it is constantly being updated. This creates an incredibly rich picture of the past — and therefore a sense that time stretched on for a long while.
Why Time Speeds Up with Age and Years Fly By
There’s a popular theory that explains the acceleration of time through simple arithmetic: at age five, one year is 20% of your entire life, while at fifty it’s only 2%. It sounds logical and even elegant, but Wittmann is skeptical of this explanation. In his view, there’s no evidence that the brain actually “calculates” lived time in this way.
The real mechanism, the scientist believes, is simultaneously simpler and more complex. At some point, childhood ends: development reaches a plateau, the brain stabilizes, and the world stops seeming so new. We’ve already seen summer; we know how it works. There are fewer and fewer new “first times” — and therefore fewer vivid memories that create the sense of duration.
Summer doesn’t disappear. It simply leaves fewer traces in memory. As noted in Wittmann’s research, subjective time accelerates with age as routine increases — while a rich and varied life subjectively lasts longer.
How Memory Affects a Person’s Perception of Time Speed
But novelty is only part of the story. A recent study by Wittmann and colleagues, accepted for publication in the journal Memory & Cognition, added another, unexpected element to this picture.
The scientists tracked memory and time perception in adults aged 20 to over 90. The result was surprising: older people described their memories not as dimmer — on the contrary, the memories they retained seemed brighter and more emotionally vivid than those of younger participants.
Older people’s memories turned out to be brighter and more emotional than those of younger people
What declined was something more subtle: the brain’s ability to encode and retain ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life. Wittmann links this to cognitive decline — a process that can begin as early as after age 30. According to him, after 30 there is a slight decline; by 50–60 it intensifies; and in deep old age it becomes dramatic. And it is precisely this decline, in the scientist’s view, that correlates with the feeling that the last ten years flew by in an instant.
It’s important to note: this study is currently at the preprint stage and awaiting full publication. But the direction itself — from “not enough novelty” to “the brain is worse at recording the mundane” — represents a notable expansion of the theory.
How to Slow Down the Perception of Time and Live Life Longer
From Wittmann’s work comes a practical takeaway, and it’s remarkably simple. If the sense of life’s duration depends on the number of remembered moments, then the way to “stretch” time is to fill life with new experiences. They don’t have to be extreme: a new route to work, an unfamiliar cuisine, a first drawing lesson at 40 — all of these create those very “bright spots” in memory.
New experiences at any age help “stretch” subjective time
Wittmann considers the practice of mindfulness as a way to slow down the subjective pace of life and “gain more time.” When we are attentive to the present moment, the brain records it better — which means in retrospect, that period will seem longer.
Routine is the main enemy. It doesn’t just make life boring — it literally compresses it in perception. If every day resembles the one before, the brain has nothing to remember, and entire months “collapse” in memory into a single vague blur.
Childhood summer was endless not because we were happier or freer (though that played a part too). It was endless because our rapidly developing brain eagerly absorbed every new experience and carefully stored it in memory. With age, this mechanism weakens — but understanding how it works gives us a chance to fight back.
A life filled with new impressions isn’t just good advice from a glossy magazine. It’s a way to ensure that when you look back, you see not a blurry smudge of years gone by, but a long and detailed story.
