How old are you? How old do you feel? If the answers to those two questions aren’t the same, you’re likely someone who believes age can be subjective. Your answers may also reveal some interesting insights to your outlook on life, says Jennifer Senior, a staff writer for The Atlantic. Senior delves into this abstract concept in her article “The Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are,” which appears in the magazine’s April 2023 issue.
“It’s bizarre, if you think about it. Certainly most of us don’t believe ourselves to be shorter or taller than we actually are. We don’t think of ourselves as having smaller ears or longer noses or curlier hair,” she writes in her piece.
We tend to have a realistic sense of other things about ourselves, but not where we are in time, says Senior. Many of us believe in alternate facts when it comes to our age. When Senior and I spoke on the phone, we compared subjective ages. I’m 58 but feel 37. Senior, 53, says she is suspended at 36 in her head. Her 76-year-old mother feels 45.
Initial research on this topic suggested that subjective aging was a form of denialism. “That it was connected to our phobias related to our culture of aging and being aged out, so you tell yourself a lie,” says Senior. “I think it’s something else.”
The reason we visualize ourselves at another age, surmises Senior, is instead linked to our beliefs about our future. For example, when Senior was actually 36, she was professionally established and full of potential. Married, she hadn’t yet had her children. “I was not yet on the gray turnpike of middle age,” she explains.
Senior says she feels 36 today because she believes she has a few more professional pivots left and more time on the clock to go with it.
For me, 37 was when I felt I was hitting my stride. My family was complete. I had a broad circle of friends, a home I loved, and fulfilling work that gave me a sense of pride. I felt secure and on my way, and it’s where I’d like to stay.
In fact, you’re likely to feel younger than your years the older you get. A 2006 survey of 1,470 adults in Denmark found that those who were over 40 saw themselves, on average, about 20% younger than their actual age.
“When you’re north of 50, a sense of unreality sets in,” says Senior. “You start to think, ‘How did I get this old? Why is it that I don’t feel my age?’”
Feeling older than your years
The Danish survey also found that adults younger than 25 have older subjective ages.
“They’re old souls, and I used to be one,” says Senior. “Until I was 40, all I wanted to be was 40. I felt out of place with younger people and in girly cliques. I think people who like their solitude when they’re younger, just hope to be older when the pressures to do young dumb things are gone. After 40, I started to slide backwards.”
Senior believes people who identify as being older than their years often have a strong influence of an older person, spending a lot of time with a grandparent or an intellectual older person in their life who made being older seem attractive.
“I spent tons of time with my grandparents who I really liked,” she says. “I still really love their music and their movies. It definitely informed my sensibilities.”
What subjective age means
Your subjective age can influence your life and choices, and Senior says there are a few things you can glean from it. First, is its ability to impact when you retire.
“People who think of themselves as younger, tend to retire when they’re older,” she says. “They tend to see themselves as having more productive work years ahead of them; they’re not throwing in the towel professionally.”
Subjective age may also give you some insights to your health. “It’s often a good proxy for how healthy people are,” says Senior. “If you are 60 and feel 40, it could mean that you take care of yourself. You’re exercising a lot and your blood pressure’s low.”
Subjective age can also imply changing cultural norms. For example, being 50 today is different than being 50 a generation ago.
“People in their 50s often still have kids at home,” says Senior. “Our parents definitely did not. We’re healthier. We eat better. There are better skin care products that make us all deceptively more youthful looking. Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton were in their late 40s when they when they were on All In the Family. If you had held a gun to my head, I would have said that they were in their 60s.”
By doing some creative accounting with your age, you may be able to impact your outlook on life. “You’re only as old as you feel” may sound like a corny sentiment, but what’s not to love about that?
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