{"id":6185,"date":"2022-07-03T07:39:25","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T05:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/03\/is-your-smartphone-ruining-your-memory-a-special-report-on-the-rise-of-digital-amnesia\/"},"modified":"2022-07-03T07:39:25","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T05:39:25","slug":"is-your-smartphone-ruining-your-memory-a-special-report-on-the-rise-of-digital-amnesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/03\/is-your-smartphone-ruining-your-memory-a-special-report-on-the-rise-of-digital-amnesia\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of \u2018digital amnesia\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018I can\u2019t remember anything\u2019 is a common complaint these days. But is it because we rely so heavily on our smartphones? And do the endless alerts and distractions stop us forming new memories?<\/p>\n

Last week, I missed a real-life meeting because I hadn\u2019t set a reminder on my smartphone, leaving someone I\u2019d never met before alone in a caf\u00e9. But on the same day, I remembered the name of the actor who played Will Smith\u2019s aunt in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air <\/em>in 1991 (Janet Hubert). Memory is weird, unpredictable and, neuroscientifically, not yet entirely understood. When memory lapses like mine happen (which they do, a lot), it feels both easy and logical to blame the technology we\u2019ve so recently adopted. Does having more memory in our pockets mean there\u2019s less in our heads? Am I losing my ability to remember things \u2013 from appointments to what I was about to do next \u2013 because I expect my phone to do it for me? Before smartphones, our heads would have held a cache of phone numbers and our memories would contain a cognitive map, built up over time, which would allow us to navigate \u2013 for smartphone users, that is no longer true.<\/p>\n

Our brains and our smartphones form a complex web of interactions: the smartphonification of life has been rising since the mid 2000s, but was accelerated by the pandemic, as was internet use in general. Prolonged periods of stress, isolation and exhaustion \u2013 common themes since March 2020 \u2013 are well known for their impact on memory. Of those surveyed by memory researcher Catherine Loveday<\/a> in 2021, 80% felt that their memories were worse than before the pandemic. We are \u2013 still \u2013 shattered, not just by Covid-19, but also by the miserable national and global news cycle. Many of us self-soothe with distractions like social media. Meanwhile, endless scrolling can, at times, create its own distress, and phone notifications and self interrupting to check for them, also seem to affect what, how and if we remember.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\n\u2018I can\u2019t remember anything\u2019 is a common complaint these days. But is it because we rely so heavily on our smartphones? And do the endless alerts and distractions stop us forming new memories?
\nLast week, I missed a real-life meeting because I hadn\u2019t set a reminder on my smartphone, leaving someone I\u2019d never met before alone in a caf\u00e9. But on the same day, I remembered the name of the actor who played Will Smith\u2019s aunt in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1991 (Janet Hubert). Memory is weird, unpredictable and, neuroscientifically, not yet entirely understood. When memory lapses like mine happen (which they do, a lot), it feels both easy and logical to blame the technology we\u2019ve so recently adopted. Does having more memory in our pockets mean there\u2019s less in our heads? Am I losing my ability to remember things \u2013 from appointments to what I was about to do next \u2013 because I expect my phone to do it for me? Before smartphones, our heads would have held a cache of phone numbers and our memories would contain a cognitive map, built up over time, which would allow us to navigate \u2013 for smartphone users, that is no longer true.
\nOur brains and our smartphones form a complex web of interactions: the smartphonification of life has been rising since the mid 2000s, but was accelerated by the pandemic, as was internet use in general. Prolonged periods of stress, isolation and exhaustion \u2013 common themes since March 2020 \u2013 are well known for their impact on memory. Of those surveyed by memory researcher Catherine Loveday in 2021, 80% felt that their memories were worse than before the pandemic. We are \u2013 still \u2013 shattered, not just by Covid-19, but also by the miserable national and global news cycle. Many of us self-soothe with distractions like social media. Meanwhile, endless scrolling can, at times, create its own distress, and phone notifications and self interrupting to check for them, also seem to affect what, how and if we remember. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018I can\u2019t remember anything\u2019 is a common complaint these days. But is it because we rely so heavily on our smartphones? And do the endless alerts and distractions stop us forming new memories? Last week, I missed a real-life meeting because I hadn\u2019t set a reminder on my smartphone, leaving someone I\u2019d never met before …<\/p>\n

Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of \u2018digital amnesia\u2019<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6185"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}