What's Your Mental Age?

Everyone knows a twenty-year-old who lives like a retired librarian. Mental age is the distance between the calendar and the way you actually spend your days. This mental age test reads it from ordinary choices: the songs you replay, the plans you write down and the hour your evenings end. Psychologists call the same idea psychological age, and habits move it far more than birthdays do.

What the test measures

The headline result is your mental age in years, anywhere from 15 to 70. Unlike a typical mental age quiz built on favourite colours, every statement here describes something you actually did last month. The number is built from two scales of twelve statements each. Taste and attention covers clothes, films, humour and music, and how long you stay with one long article or album. Routines and social life covers morning habits, written plans, how fast you answer messages, the size of your company and the hour you head home. That second scale works like a small mental maturity test for your week. Trend-led, fast and late habits take years off, while old favourites, planned weeks and quiet evenings add them. Most people land between their mid-twenties and late thirties.

How the test works and how to read your result

There are 24 short statements, and most people finish in about six minutes. For each one you choose how well it fits you, from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. Ten of the statements describe the younger habit instead of the older one, so racing through on autopilot does not tilt the result. The test never asks your birth date, so the comparison with your passport is yours to make, and it is usually the fun part. Anyone who has typed what is my mental age into a search bar gets a straight answer here. Your result includes:

• your mental age in years and its level: young soul, grown-up mind or old soul;
• the habits that took years off and the ones that added them;
• a separate score for taste and for routines, so you can see which half of your life is older;
• a comparison with other people who took the test.

Take it with a friend and compare numbers: the gap is rarely the one you expect.