Why Is It Harder To Learn New Things As An Adult?

It isn't.

Or, rather, it doesn't have to be. There is no predisposition that makes learning easier for the young. This myth is based on two misconceptions

1. That mimicry is learning. Kids will pick up things really quickly by mimicry. However, they rarely apply what they've learned back to a system to promote understanding. Have you ever questioned a youngster about how to do something and got a dismissive answer? That's because they don't really know the answer but they won't admit it. Have you ever had a youngster get upset with you because you're not doing something the "right" way? That's because they only know one way of doing something. There's a brilliant video of children faced with older computer technology and they're completely lost on how to operate it because no one has shown them.

2. It's not learning new things. It's learning to do the damned same thing over and over again. To play music, we first learned to operate a record player, then a cassette player, then a CD player, then a MP3 player and finally the cloud. It's just like talking. We first learned that a dog was a "woof woof" then a "bow wow", then a "doggy woggy" then a "doggy" and finally a "dog". After a while, you just get bored having to learn to do the same thing again because the technology's changed. You're like the Red Queen in "Alice Through The Looking Glass": you're running just to keep in the same spot. Every "improvement" forces you back to the beginning again.

Having said that, adults do find it harder to learn because of two things:

1. Fear of failure. When did it become a bad thing to fail? When you're a kid, your worst attempt is met with great applause and praise. Then, all of a sudden, nothing but utter and total perfection will do.
2. People don't know how to learn. At school, not only were we taught the curriculum but the teachers went to great pains to teach us how to think and how to learn. As soon as I hit university, I realised what a rare privilege that had been. This isn't a problem for children because they don't want to learn, they just want to mimic and get on with it. However, later in life, it becomes important to actually understand something rather than just learn it. Then they hit the problem that they've never been shown.
   

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