Throughout the past couple of years, people have learned to depend on the web very frequently, almost every day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly everyone became more dependent on the internet. It has even come to the point where it is almost impossible to imagine society without the internet due to the extent of technological advances, as the web is used as a key source of information and communication. Because of how society’s reliability on technology changes, it also affects the ways people remember certain pieces of information.

Memory stands as a function in the brain that holds data or information that is found important. However, with the impact of technology on brains, the way human memory functions is changing. In other words, the skill of remembering information is not deteriorating, it is merely changing what types of information the brain chooses to remember. As people are exposed to search engines that are ready at their fingertips, they tend to remember fewer facts that they were actually searching for. Instead, they memorize the shortcuts of how and where to find that information. 

Proven Studies

According to studies conducted by Betsy Sparrow of Columbia, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard, and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, it has been acknowledged that the Internet has become a part of human memories. In one experiment, all participants were told to type in 40 pieces of information into a computer. Half of them were told that the information would be saved on the computer and the other half were told it would not. The results showed that participants were more likely to remember the information when knowing that they would not be able to find it later. On the other hand, those who had been told that the information would be saved did not make the effort to remember it since they expected to be able to return to where they had stored their knowledge. In another experiment, participants were told to remember the statements themselves and in which of the five folders they could find them. It later was shown that the participants remembered the folder locations better than the statements themselves. 

As a result, through the technological advances that society faces, human memory is adapting to these changes. Rather than memorizing the exact information that is needed, people are more likely to remember how to access the information and where to find it. Just like how few people remember every single password to every website visited, people use the internet to store pieces of information. Though it has not yet been confirmed whether technology negatively affects memories, further research is underway to find the answer.