Have you noticed that many of the things you found funny in your youth hit differently now that you've got a few more years under your belt?
That film you couldn't stop laughing at in your teens suddenly seems like the dullest thing on the planet. The joke you couldn't get enough of when you were 7 seems utterly offensive to the adult you. You aren't imagining it... And you're not alone. Experts say our sense of humor changes as we get older.
"We are born humorless little poop machines," is how data journalist Daniel Parris explains it. "We can't make funny voices, we can't do bits, and we can't engage in wordplay—we simply eat, sleep, poop, cry, and poop again. And then, amidst this onslaught of poop, a sense of humor begins to emerge."
He goes on to write that life is full of laughter after that but once we exit adolescence, "comedic interactions begin to wane, and we laugh less often."
A Gallup survey of 1.4 million people in 166 countries revealed that our sense of humor really plummets from the age of 23. And every year after that, we laugh a little less. The more we adult, work and pay bills, the less funny life becomes.
“We grow up, enter the workforce, and suddenly become ‘serious and important people,’ trading laughter for ties and pantsuits,” write the authors of a book called Humor Seriously. “Before long, we lose levity entirely in a sea of bottom lines, slide decks, and mind-numbing conference calls.”
The authors, Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, add that the average 4-year-old laughs as many as 300 times a day, while the average 40-year-old will take two and a half months to log that many chuckles. Childhood is often carefree. Adulthood often isn’t, they say. And we couldn't agree more.
Interestingly, studies have found that as we hit our twilight years, we start to laugh a little more. That's possibly because we're no longer working, or we've come to terms with the fact that life is one big joke.
It makes sense... "Surveys show that people laugh more on weekends than workdays to begin with, and in retirement, every day is a weekend," reports the New York Post.
But Aaker says that there's another reason we laugh more when we're old and gray. Humor in old age “is a way of building bonds and making memories,” explains the expert. However, Aaker warns that you may not want to wait so long to laugh so hard.
“My mom worked at a hospice,” reveals the behavioral-science professor at Stanford. “What people were often saying on the last days of their life was, I wish I didn’t take myself so seriously.”
Just because we laugh less as we age doesn't mean we don't want to have a good giggle every day. And that's where social media accounts like Gabs Pkitass' come in. She may be over 50, but her relatable memes and jokes can easily appeal to a younger crowd too.
If you've laughed at all of Pkitass' posts but still need your funny bone tickled, you should be actively seeking out humor, say some experts.
