Memory shortcomings can be attributed to many things—aging, disease, genetics, and even alcohol and artificial sweetener consumption. But perhaps the most common reason, especially among younger generations, is also the most surprising: the Internet.
More specifically, it’s the ability to instantly find the answer to almost any question on the Internet. There’s no need to remember anything when all you really need to remember is how to say, “OK, Google…”
The tidal wave of information we encounter every single day is a major factor in the way we employ our memory. Because we have to be more efficient and selective about what we need to remember, we condition ourselves to ignore information that isn’t immediately useful or intriguing. We know that if we have to access that information later, a few keystrokes on a search engine will retrieve it.
Essentially, what we are remembering more today is not so much the content itself but how to find it. We use the Internet as our external hard drive and our memory function is reshaping itself to work in conjunction with that offloaded capacity.
While this may sound like we are headed toward a future where we become little more than search engine slaves, this article provides further insight into our cognitive workings when we’re online and steps we can take to process and retain information more effectively on our own.
(In case you didn’t remember to click on the link above, here it is again.)