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Most people perceive time as going by more slowly when we are children, than when we are adults. I personally suspect that different stages of brain development in a typical human are more to blame than anything.
As an adult, you know when time seems to drag? When I am bored. I remember the summers as a kid seeming to last forrreevvverrrrrr.... and it was because I was often bored. As a child I was hungry for mental stimulation, as most children are. It was challenging to find enough of it. As an adult, and especially as technology has progressed quite a lot since I was a kid in the 80s, and I have more freedom to choose things to stimulate my mind with, I am not bored as often.
I don't even have to be bored standing in line at the store. I can whip out my phone and stim my brain scrolling social media or reading something or even coming here, anytime I please. And a child's brain seeks stimulation because it's growing and it needs to be stimulated to best develop to its optimum potential. As adults, we develop routines and pattern recognition to handle a lot of the mundane stuff, we perfect the ability to "auto-pilot" our way through boring routine things like our commute or a shower or whatever.
But being often bored as a kid did teach me how to cope with discomfort and how to tolerate under-stimulating situations to some extent, and how to entertain myself just by thinking through complex ideas at times... Occasionally I wonder what the effect, positive or negative (?) might be of kids now having access to handheld brain stimulating devices, from early ages.
It does have to be having an effect on how our brains release and process serotonin and dopamine and such. Might account for the rise in depression and anxiety among today's youth, perhaps. I don't know. I'm not enough of a scientist to say and I don't feel like doing on a Google jaunt over it. But it's a thought...one I'm sure that someone out there is studying.
But I wonder if I am the only one who was often bored in the summertime, and if they also felt like it dragged on...I realized pretty quickly, as soon as I understood calendars and the concept of time, that it was very weird how the school year was a much longer period of time than a summer was, and yet summers always FELT a lot longer to me than a whole school year did. Not that I loved being in school exactly, but it was more stimulating.
Well, perhaps, too...stress is a factor. Because I found school very stressful. But my adult life has not always been more stressful than my childhood was, and time does not seem to slow to a drag just because I'm not stressed as an adult. A relaxing week long vacation would fly by pretty quickly.
I was the opposite As a kid I hated school and loved the summer because you could stay up late, hangout late with your friends etc so the summer seemed to go by too quickly and the school year felt like an eternity.
I was the opposite As a kid I hated school and loved the summer because you could stay up late, hangout late with your friends etc so the summer seemed to go by too quickly and the school year felt like an eternity.
You had friends, though.
I didn't. Not as a child anyways.
I had no siblings, no friends, a very unpleasant home life or even more unpleasant daycare providers. My only happiness was to escape off into the woods by myself. Which was nice, I do have some good memories of that.
Well. I also read a lot of books, and took stuff apart and built things. Tinkered. I built a little solar powered car when I was 8, out of odds and ends I scavenged from other things. But I was horribly bored an awful lot of the time.
I remember always looking forward to school starting, only to feel so disappointed when I'd been there a little while and it was like, "Oh yeah...I forgot how much this sucks."
I had no siblings, no friends, a very unpleasant home life or even more unpleasant daycare providers. My only happiness was to escape off into the woods by myself. Which was nice, I do have some good memories of that.
Well. I also read a lot of books, and took stuff apart and built things. Tinkered. I built a little solar powered car when I was 8, out of odds and ends I scavenged from other things. But I was horribly bored an awful lot of the time.
I remember always looking forward to school starting, only to feel so disappointed when I'd been there a little while and it was like, "Oh yeah...I forgot how much this sucks."
Gotcha. I was gonna say if you didn’t have friends at school usually home is a sanctuary but I guess you described why it wasn’t.
I also was bored in the summers and preferred to be in school with my friends. Summers were okay, but they were boring. I'd read a lot and play outside, but that gets old after a couple weeks. We were pretty poor and didn't go on vacations or even day trips, really. It was the same thing day after day, and I would count the days until it was time to go back to school.
How fascinating! I'll have to look up that tribe since we also live at the equator with no seasons. Weather is the same all year around. It's a weird sensation, coming from No. America.
I always wondered what people did before clocks. I guess they just "got there" when they got there....Sunrise, sunset or midday, maybe....
I've thought about it myself, considered being an expat in Mexico. Then I thought, if I was staring at those beautiful beaches everyday, that strong sun everyday, would it become too boring? It's great going there in the winter! But everyday? Especially because Americans can't really work, there's restrictions. And I've seen more than enough drunk expats...but damn the Germans for creating clocks. I'm a procrastinator.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
You had friends, though.
I didn't. Not as a child anyways.
I had no siblings, no friends, a very unpleasant home life or even more unpleasant daycare providers. My only happiness was to escape off into the woods by myself. Which was nice, I do have some good memories of that.
Well. I also read a lot of books, and took stuff apart and built things. Tinkered. I built a little solar powered car when I was 8, out of odds and ends I scavenged from other things. But I was horribly bored an awful lot of the time.
I remember always looking forward to school starting, only to feel so disappointed when I'd been there a little while and it was like, "Oh yeah...I forgot how much this sucks."
I'm sorry your childhood summers were boring. Mine were heaven. Probably 100 kids in the neighborhood as most families had 3-6 children in the 60's. Summers were far too SHORT! Yeah, I could get excited at the thought of returning to school too, but I was sad the glorious free time would end, day after day of exploration. But, I do also remember some hot sunny summer day, me and my best friend sitting on one of our porches, "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" Then neither coming up with a great idea. Those 'bored' times were far and few between at least, but a boring 5 minutes as a kid seemed like eternity.
Anyway, I've read a lot of your posts, some are terrific. I would have been your childhood friend! (As long as you didn't mind a mischevious one).
I've thought about it myself, considered being an expat in Mexico. Then I thought, if I was staring at those beautiful beaches everyday, that strong sun everyday, would it become too boring? It's great going there in the winter! But everyday? Especially because Americans can't really work, there's restrictions. And I've seen more than enough drunk expats...but damn the Germans for creating clocks. I'm a procrastinator.
I'm sorry your childhood summers were boring. Mine were heaven. Probably 100 kids in the neighborhood as most families had 3-6 children in the 60's. Summers were far too SHORT! Yeah, I could get excited at the thought of returning to school too, but I was sad the glorious free time would end, day after day of exploration. But, I do also remember some hot sunny summer day, me and my best friend sitting on one of our porches, "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" Then neither coming up with a great idea. Those 'bored' times were far and few between at least, but a boring 5 minutes as a kid seemed like eternity.
Anyway, I've read a lot of your posts, some are terrific. I would have been your childhood friend! (As long as you didn't mind a mischevious one).
Thank you, but I kind of doubt it. I was a very different person then, but that's a glorious part of being human...always learning, always growing.
I was a quiet, awkward, oversensitive child. Other kids scared the heck outta me, honestly. They behaved in ways that I did not understand and seemed captivated by things I thought were stupid. I just didn't connect well with other kids. I assume it's because I was raised by an elderly woman until she died when I was 5.
I like to say that after that, and most of the way through my teen years, in one way or another I was a feral child. I am only partly joking, but it sounds funny, doesn't it?
But the point is, I suspect that if we think about it, the times that drag are the times that we are feeling understimulated mentally. And I suspect that the developing brain of a child has a greater need for stimulation, than that of an adult does.
But even as an adult, think of any job that you have ever worked. Time goes by fast when you're very busy, even if you're also very stressed. But if you're bored and it's slow and there's just not much to do, and you are not allowed to find any way to keep yourself occupied, every minute feels like an hour.
The measure of the minutes didn't change, only our perception of them did.
So if all of this is true, then how about the way that a person perceives time distortion when on drugs? I know that weird perception of time was a key feature of both a cannabis high and my LSD trips, back when I did that in my younger days.
I'm an accountant so I have found that time flies very fast for me. I have deadlines throughout the month, the 10th, the 20th, the EOM stuff. When I'm busy these dates just run up on me and the next thing I know it's the next month. AND...... the older I get, the faster they go.
I can't believe Christmas is around the corner. We JUST did Christmas what seems like weeks ago. I know Covid has caused a "standstill" with a lot of people, but it seems it's flown by faster during the Covid shutdowns.
There was actually a study done once (I hate useless studies of which this was one) that proved: yes, time does seem to go faster the older you get.
I agree with Boots idea here: we are all different and it depends.
I also have a theory about why to most people it does seems like time flies.
When you're young and in school, you can't WAIT for Xmas break. Or spring break. or summer break.
IT'S NEVER GOING TO GET HERE!
As the OLDER parent: UGH, Spring break is coming, who's going to watch Suzy, and Johnny, should I take a few days off work... OMG XMAS IS ONLY 2 weeks away and I am not done XMAS shopping yet?!?!?
You look forward to stuff when you're young, you dread it when you're older.
Correlation?
Stop dreading, start looking forward. YOU can change the perception.
People gauged by the sun. Without clocks, you get pretty good at gauging time of day by the sun.
That tribe in the Amazon must be egalitarian. In more stratified societies, like the Maya, the priesthood, under the command of the kings, tracked the movements of the sun, moon and Venus in a complex calendric system. This was to pinpoint important agricultural functions; planting time, harvesting time, etc., as well as ceremonial events and the dynasties of kings. The Maya had the most complex calendric system of their era (which spanned a couple thousand years or more), and was one of the earliest societies to "invent" the concept "0". Complex calendrics necessitate precise math.
North American tribes tracked the sun carefully year-round. Some had solar observatories. Perhaps in the Amazon, where food is so plentiful, they didn't need to keep an agricultural calendar. And without cities of tens of thousands of people, as in the Mayan region, they didn't need to intensify agricultural production. Maybe they don't even have agriculture per se, but manage by hunting, gathering, and perhaps a little horticulture; tending to food-bearing plants as they exist in nature, rather than planting.
I think it is mostly subsistence "farming" in the Amazon, so planting like the Mayans probably isn't required.
The Mayans WERE incredible in their precision mathematics. And construction!
I can sort of guestimate time by the sun, except that it's always cloudy here.
I personally think it has something to do with technology. We receive news every minute.
Do you think old people in say,1880, would say time goes fast?
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