What Is Your Inner Age?
The age you actually are when nobody is checking your ID
Everybody knows a nineteen-year-old who is secretly sixty and a seventy-year-old who has never once been an adult. The number on the document is one thing; the age you operate at - how you handle a Saturday with nothing planned, a compliment, a new gadget, a Tuesday at eleven at night - is another, and it is the one your friends actually respond to. This is a game, and it is a game most people find alarmingly accurate.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Ten situations. Pick what you would actually do, not what your age is supposed to do.
What it measures
Nothing measurable. It sorts your habits - energy, caution, what you find fun, how you treat a free evening - into one of five ages, and the age it picks is a caricature that happens to fit. Wear it lightly.
Possible results
Seven
Everything is either the best thing ever or a catastrophe, and both pass in an hour
Nineteen
Everything is possible, urgent and slightly dramatic
Thirty-five
You know what you like, and you have finally stopped apologising for it
Sixty-two
You have seen this before, you know how it ends, and you brought snacks
Eighty-five
You have stopped caring what anyone thinks, and it turns out that was the secret
Common questions
Is feeling younger than you are a good thing?
In the research on subjective age, feeling somewhat younger than your years is the norm after about forty and is associated with better health and mood, though which causes which is not settled. This test is not that research. It is a portrait of your habits as an age, and there is no good or bad answer - the eighty-five-year-old inside a thirty-year-old and the seven-year-old inside a sixty-year-old are both having a fine time.
Can I get a different result on a different day?
Easily, and it will usually be a neighbouring age. Most people are two of these depending on the week - thirty-five on a work week and seven on holiday is the classic pair. The one that shows up when you are rested and not performing for anyone is the one your friends would have guessed.
An honest note This is a game and it is marked as one. There is a serious literature on subjective age - the age people feel, which tends to sit some years below their real one from midlife onwards and which predicts a handful of health outcomes - but this test does not measure it and does not try to. It sorts you into a caricature of one of five ages based on ten habits, and the caricature is for fun. Nothing here describes maturity, and your inner age has no bearing on how you should be treated or what you are capable of.