Why is the bounding box of a text element taller than the actual text?

[Emin&Trang]

Recently switched from affinity designer to Illustrator, and this seems a bit strange. Why is the bounding box of a text layer taller than the letters themselves?
There's no "return" at the end of the line and this happens on all fonts, even on basic ones like Helvetica.
Any way to fix this or maybe someone can explain why this happens? 

[Larry G. Schneider]

Do you have any leading applied to the text?

[Emin&Trang]

No. It's on "Auto", and even after reducing it to 6pt, nothing changes 😕

[Monika Gause]

This is normal for Illustrator for measuring type.

Do you need the bounding box displayed differently or do you want to input a certain size? If the latter, in the panel menu of the chracters panel you can turn on the measuring options.

[Emin&Trang]

Well, I just want to align the "After Effects" text directly in the center of the blue rounded rectangle in the back, but since the text within its bounding box is not center to begin with, I can't align it properly, if that makes sense. It just looks off center vertically.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

You can do so in the Align panel. In its panel menu you can turn on the ALign to glyph options.

But beware: The text needs to have slightly more distance to the bottom than to the top for optical reasons.

[Emin&Trang]

Oh okay. That's really strange though isn't it? Like, why would this even happen in the first place, and what optical reasons are at play? Would appreciate if you could let me know. Thank you! 
When I was using Affinity Designer, this was much more intuitive...

[Monika Gause]

Every designer should know about the optical reasons. It's about how humans perceive things. If it is aligned to the vertical center it always will look like it is nearer to the bottom.

[Emin&Trang]

So according to this logic, the human eye perceives the text in the image I attached as centered? 
Just can't wrap my head around it. It's clearly vertically off center hahah

[Monika Gause]

That text is too much to the top. This optical phenomenon is independent from what Illustrator does. You have to adjust it. You have to see it.

[Ton Frederiks]

There needs to be room for accents.

[Emin&Trang]

Sure, what about that space at the bottom though?

[Monika Gause]

It's for the descenders.

This is the space around letters. Illustrator just shows it all with its bounding box. 

[Ton Frederiks]

See Monika's answer.