What are the Internet and smartphone doing with memory and is it possible to fight it

How technology affects our memory

Accessible internet causes digital amnesia

If a person knows that at any moment he can find information, he remembers it much worse. This feature was discovered in a study and called "digital amnesia" or "Google effect."

Participants were asked to write down a few facts on a computer. Then they were divided into two groups: some were told that they would have access to information at any time, while others were told that the data would be deleted after some time.

As a result, participants who were confident in free access to information remembered facts much worse than those who did not hope to see the records again.

Due to constant access to the Internet, there is a shift in cognition: we remember the sources of information well, and the data itself quickly disappears. Thus, we acquire some dependence on our gadgets.

Photos erase memories

We can capture any event on a smartphone camera, but this weakens our own memory of what is happening.

This effect was found in one study. Participants were given cameras and sent on a tour of the museum, asking them to shoot only certain objects and just look at others. As a result, people remembered better the exhibits that were not in the photo.

On the one hand, when you shoot an object, it is less memorable for you. But on the other hand, you can always look at the photo and refresh your memory of the details that you would never have remembered yourself.

At least this is true for regular media files that remain on your devices. However, if you shoot photos and videos for Snapchat, Instagram and VKontakte stories, the information will not only be remembered worse, but it will disappear forever over time.

We remember what was not

We can completely forget an event, remember it in a completely different way, or even come up with a past that did not exist.

In one interesting experiment, participants were shown fake photographs, claiming to be their childhood photographs. People not only did not suspect the trick, but also "remembered" the events depicted in the photo.

This can be explained by the ability of our brains to adapt to new experiences. The streams of information from the internet and social media influence our perception and can create false memories.

Is it possible to recover memory

The smartphone and the Internet really depress our memory and to some extent separate us from reality. But this process is reversible: like many other functions, memory is strengthened if it is trained.

Basically, memory is the connections between nerve cells in the brain. By training it, you make the neural paths stronger. And shifting some of the functions to gadgets, on the contrary, weaken connections.

However, even if you are so used to your smartphone that you cannot remember your birthday without a reminder, you can always return your memory. So, research shows that a month of daily half-hour training improves short-term memory by 30%.

And if you devote enough time and energy to it, you can achieve incredible results. For example, American student Alex Mullen began to train memory to learn better, and soon won the International Memory Association championship twice and set several records.

And it took Joshua Foer just a year of training to go from being an absent-minded journalist to a U. S. memory champion. He then wrote the bestselling book Einstein Walks on the Moon, which inspired many people, including Mullen, to improve their memory.

And Katie Kermode, thanks to a technique called "memory palace", set two world records: in five minutes she memorized 150 faces and names, and in 15 minutes - 318 random words. We analyze this technique in the video below.

But while technology has a big impact on how our brains work, we shouldn't go to extremes. If the smartphone partially replaces your memory, and this does not interfere with your life, there is nothing to worry about. Well, if you want to be less dependent on the gadget and keep more information in your head, it's never too late to start training and improve your abilities.