why time felt slower when we were kids (and how to get it back)

the neuroscience of time perception

Lately, I’ve been noticing a trend on social media: nostalgiacore. Hazy, sun-drenched photos of childhood bedrooms, the glow of a boxy TV playing Cartoon Network, the pixelated interface of an old computer game. There’s always ambient music humming softly in the background, something melancholic (like a lo-fi remix of a Nintendo soundtrack).

The captions are variations of the same (aching) sentiment:

• Nothing will ever feel like this again.

• I wish I could go back.

And in the comments, thousands of people with the same collective grief:

• “This makes me cry, I miss this so much.”

• “Why does everything feel so different now?”

There’s something so profound about this - about the way entire generations seem to be mourning not just their childhoods, but something deeper, something harder to name. It isn’t just youth we miss. It’s something about the way the world felt.

Time stretched differently then. Days were long, summers endless, and waiting for a birthday felt like an eternity. But now? We blink, and suddenly its 2025.

It’s tempting to romanticize childhood, to believe that life was once more vibrant simply because we were young. But the truth is, we weren’t just young - we were present. Our attention was sharper, our awareness wider. The world was unfamiliar, and our brains, hungry for understanding, devoured every detail. Nostalgiacore is about more than just nostalgia - it’s about a longing for the way we once inhabited time. Time itself hasn’t sped up - we’ve just stopped experiencing it the way we used to.

The Vanishing of Time (What Happened?)

As kids, the world was new. Our brains were constantly absorbing - cataloging details, imprinting sensations, locking in memories with high fidelity. Every trip to the grocery store, every walk home from school, every sleepover with friends - it all carried weight.

But as we age, life becomes patterned. The brain, in its efficiency, stops recording the mundane. The same commute, the same daily routine, the same predictable rhythms - it all blends into a blur. Novelty fades, and with it, our perception of time expands.

It isn’t that time moves faster. It’s that we stop noticing it.

The Science of Time’s Acceleration

If it feels like the years are passing faster than they used to, there’s a reason for it.

1. The Oddball Effect (How Novelty Warps Time)

Unexpected moments - like a power outage, a surprise party, or even narrowly avoiding a car accident - often feel like they lasted longer than they actually did. This is because of the oddball effect, a cognitive phenomenon where the brain devotes more energy to encoding novel events, making them feel stretched in memory.

As children, everything was an oddball event. The first time we rode a bike, the first time we lost a tooth, the first time we saw fireworks - all of it was raw, vivid, uncompressed. But as adults, fewer things surprise us. The less novelty, the more time shrinks.

2. The Proportional Theory (Why Years Feel Shorter)

A year at age 10 is one-tenth of your entire existence - a vast percentage of your lived experience. A year at age 30? One-thirtieth! The proportional weight of time gets smaller and smaller, making each year feel increasingly fleeting.

This is the proportional theory of time perception - as we age, each unit of time represents a smaller percentage of our lived experience, creating an illusion of acceleration.

This is why childhood summers stretched on forever, and why adulthood makes December feel like it’s always just around the corner.

3. The Predictability Trap (Why Repetition Compresses Time)

The brain is a master at efficiency. When an experience is repeated often enough, the brain stops storing the details. The first time you drove to work, you noticed everything - the street names, the trees, the way the morning light spilled across the pavement. But after the hundredth time, it became a blur. You arrive without even remembering the drive.

This is the predictability trap - the more repetitive life becomes, the less of it our brain actively records. And what is time, if not the memories we collect along the way?

Reclaiming Time (How to Make Life Feel Expansive Again)

If time is slipping through your fingers, the answer isn’t to mourn childhood - it’s to reawaken the part of you that paid attention.

Here’s the secret: novelty slows time down.

And you don’t need grand, cinematic moments to access it. You don’t need to move to another country or quit your job or go on a soul-searching journey. You only need to do what your childhood self did effortlessly - notice.

Ways to Expand Time Again

• Change the smallest detail. Take a different route home. Sit in a different chair. Order something new at your favorite café. The brain perks up at deviation, no matter how small.

• Experience something as if it’s the first time. Drink a cup of tea and really taste it. Feel the warmth spread through your body. Let it be new again.

• Interrupt autopilot. Catch yourself lost in habit - then pause. What do you hear? What colors surround you? What does the air smell like?

• Take a walk without your phone. Just walk. Let your mind wander. Let the world reach you without distraction.

• Watch how light moves. Across a table, through a window, over your hands. Your brain was once mesmerized by this - let it be again.

• Touch the world. Feel the grain of wood, the silk of fabric, the coolness of water on your skin. Engage your senses. Wake them up.

The Neuroscience of Presence (How to Feel More Alive)

At the core of this practice is something deeply physiological. Presence activates the insula, a part of the brain responsible for bodily awareness and sensory perception. When we are fully engaged - when we slow down enough to actually be where we are - this part of the brain lights up.

Mindfulness, at its core, isn’t about silence or emptying the mind. It’s about returning to the body, to sensation, to the moment. It’s about choosing to exist in your own life rather than watching it slip by.

You Don’t Miss Childhood, You Miss Presence

The magic of childhood wasn’t in being young. It was in how present we were.

Time felt slow because we were there for it. We looked closely, felt deeply, lived inside our experiences rather than outside of them.

The good news? You don’t need to go back in time to reclaim this. You only need to start paying attention again.

Because when you do, time stretches. Days regain their texture. Life, once again, feels like something you’re living.

If you feel moved, I would love to hear how these ideas land with you - whether you try out any of these practices, or simply notice moments of wonder a little more closely. Your reflections, comments, thoughts, and experiences are deeply welcome here.

References

1. Farb, N. A. S., Segal, Z. V., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., Fatima, Z., & Anderson, A. K. (2007). Attending to the present: Mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2(4), 313–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsm030

2. Eagleman, D. M. (2008). Human time perception and its illusions. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18(2), 131–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2008.06.002

3. Pariyadath, V., & Eagleman, D. M. (2007). The effect of predictability on subjective duration. PLoS ONE, 2(11), e1264. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001264

4. Wittmann, M., & Lehnhoff, S. (2005). Age effects in perception of time. Psychological Reports, 97(3), 921–935. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.97.3.921-935