Here’s one advantage to getting older — less stress!
A new study published in the journal Developmental Psychology found adults report fewer stressors as they age and the challenges they do encounter don’t bother them as much.
The research examined patterns in exposure and reactivity to daily stressors among adults between 22 and 77 years old over two decades.
“There’s something about growing old that leads to fewer stressors,” lead researcher David Almeida said in a statement.
“This could be the types of social roles that we fill as we age. As younger people, we may be juggling more, including jobs, families and homes, all of which create instances of daily stress. But as we age, our social roles and motivations change. Older people talk about wanting to maximize and enjoy the time they have.”
The team, helmed by Almeida, a professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, found that, over time, adults experienced an 11% reduction in the occurrence of stressor days on average.
In terms of participants’ exact ages, 25-year-olds reported stressors nearly half the time, while 70-year-olds reported stressors on only 30% of days.
“A 25-year-old is much grumpier on the days when they experience a stressor, but as we age, we really figure out how to decrease those exposures,” said Almeida, adding that his research shows daily stress steadily decreases until a person is in his or her mid-50s, when people are the least affected by stress exposures.
“Growing older from 35 to 65 is very different than growing older from 65 to 95,” he explained.
The new study includes research from Almeida’s National Study of Daily Experiences, which has collected data on daily life from more than 3,000 adults since 1995.
Participants took part in a series of phone interviews about their daily stress levels for eight days in a row. These assessments were repeated every nine years or so for a diary spanning 20 years.
Almeida said he is looking forward to the next round of data collection, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. The research will be used to assess the impact of the pandemic on daily stress.
“A lot of my prior work looked at these small, daily stressors — being late to a meeting, having an argument with a partner, caring for a sick child — and found that our emotional responses to these events are predictive of later health and well-being, including chronic conditions, mental health and even mortality,” said Almeida.
“With this new research, it’s encouraging to see that as we age, we begin to deal with these stressors better.”
In a separate study, 41% of Americans reported their lives have become more stressful in the past two years.
Meanwhile, US adults say they only feel relaxed about 40 minutes per day, on average, with 47% claiming they get even fewer minutes of peace than that, according to a “self-care” poll published earlier this year.