Why Time Speeds Up With Age

Remember when one summer felt endless? Now whole years seem to vanish. Birthdays arrive faster, Christmas comes around every few months, and entire years blur together. But clocks don't speed up. So what is actually changing? Scientists have been working on this question for almost 150 years. In this video we go through the four serious explanations: from a 19th-century philosopher's simple math, to an internal clock that shifts with age, to an experiment where people were dropped backwards from a 31-meter tower. And we look at a 2026 study that put the most popular theory to the test, and found something nobody expected. This is the long answer. Chapters: 0:00 Why does time feel faster? 1:10 Does it really happen? 2:50 Explanation 1: Each year is a smaller slice of your life 4:50 Explanation 2: Your internal clock 7:19 Explanation 3: The free-fall experiment 9:12 Fewer firsts, fewer memories 10:36 The 2026 study that tested it 12:30 Explanation 4: What really predicts it 14:07 The full answer: can you slow it down? Sources and studies mentioned: Wittmann & Lehnhoff (2005), survey of 499 people aged 14 to 94, Munich Paul Janet's proportional theory (19th century) Adrian Bejan, Duke University (2019), "Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older" David Eagleman's free-fall experiment, Dallas Sapienza University of Rome & Freiburg (2026), Memory and Cognition The Long Answer: the questions you never asked Google, fully answered. Subscribe for the next question. #psychology #science #timeperception