Is the Internet Ruining Our Memory?

We no longer need to think for ourselves because search engines will do it for us...

By Sylvia Rani

When I was a child, I remembered everything. From my family’s phone numbers and license plates to the names of all the major bones in the human body, I was an information hoarder. I would learn things with the implicit purpose of remembering them for as long as possible. Sometime between then and now, Google entered my life and changed everything.

I have noticed something that I am becoming increasingly concerned about: I no longer remember things. I don’t remember what I did last week and I don't remember my own license plate number. I don’t remember how many pints are in a gallon even though I’ve definitely Googled it before, probably multiple times. When I consider why I no longer remember things, it makes me a little bit sad and a little bit scared: I’m no longer trying to remember things.

Memory, at its core, is stored information. My growing reliance on Google and external sources has reduced my ability to remember things because I simply don’t have to. I no longer need to remember what I did last week because I have photos in my phone of anything significant that happened, and I don’t need to remember how many pints are in a gallon because I’m one Google search away from that information. This is a common process referred to as “cognitive offloading,” in which the human brain will choose to rely on the external environment in order to reduce its cognitive demand. It’s an efficient way to free up space for higher-level thinking, but as a habit, it can damage our ability to retain and recall information.

While this might not sound too problematic (“If Google can remember for me, why should I?”), we need long-term memory in order to synthesize old and new information and reach novel conclusions. So while it might be tempting, we should be mindful of how often we resort to uploading the contents of our brains onto our phones. Our creativity literally depends on it.