Is The Internet Your Memory Now?

A new study has concluded that the he Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains. In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don’t recall what it is. The findings of the study are that:

• People remember where to look up information - not the info itself

• People actively forget information if they think they can look it up later

• Tests on how people remembered items they would normally Google showed changes 

The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an ‘external memory’ just as computers use an external hard drive. Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into ‘withdrawal when we can’t find out something immediately’.

Our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing ‘more and more like losing a friend’.
Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University in the U.S. carried out four tests to check their theory.

In fact, some of those in the study ‘actively did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read’, the paper says.

The study was lead by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor at the department of psychology at Columbia University. In their paper, the researchers say that we now have access to the Internet 24 hours a day meaning we are 'seldom offline unless by choice' and it is 'hard to remember how we found information before the Internet became a ubiquitous presence in our lives'.

The paper reads: ‘The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can ‘Google’ the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue.

When faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it.

Is this research demonstrating that we are starting to use a Global Brain?


According to Sparrow, a greater understanding of how our memory works in a world with search engines has the potential to change teaching and learning in all fields.

“Perhaps those who teach in any context, be they college professors, doctors or business leaders, will become increasingly focused on imparting greater understanding of ideas and ways of thinking, and less focused on memorization,” said Sparrow. “And perhaps those who learn will become less occupied with facts and more engaged in larger questions of understanding.”



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