Smoothed amplitudes from Kepler, K2 and TESS phot.

We show that a simple light-curve statistic called the "smoothed amplitude" is proportional to stellar age as t^-1/2^, following a Skumanich-like spin-down relation. We marginalize over the unknown stellar inclinations by forward modeling the ensemble of light curves for direct comparison with the Kepler, K2, and TESS photometry.

We sample the posterior distributions for spot coverage with approximate Bayesian computation. We find typical spot coverages in the range 1%-10%, which decrease with increasing stellar age. The spot coverage is proportional to t^n^ where n=-0.37+/-0.16, also statistically consistent with a Skumanich-like t^-1/2^ decay of starspot coverage with age.