If you have occasional memory lapses like mine, academics have a new buzzword for this concept: ‘digital amnesia’. And it’s not what you get after a Monday night in town on the trebs. Digital amnesia is the societal shift from individuals remembering and recalling information to reliance on digital devices such as smartphones to store information (phone numbers, appointments, your dog’s birthday, etc.).
Neuroscientists are on the fence about it. Chris Bird is professor of cognitive neuroscience in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex and runs research with the Episodic Memory Group. He offers, “I don’t have a problem with using external devices to augment our thought processes or memory processes. We’re doing it more, but that frees up time to concentrate, focus on and remember other things.” In other words, he thinks that the kind of things we use our phones to remember are, for most human brains, difficult to remember.
It's very convenient, but convenience has a price.
Professor Oliver Hardt, McGill University
However, Professor Oliver Hardt, who studies the neurobiology of memory and forgetting at McGill University in Montreal, is far more circumspect. “Once you stop using your memory it will get worse, which makes you use your devices even more,” he says. “We use them for everything. If you go to a website for a recipe, you press a button and it sends the ingredient list to your smartphone. It’s very convenient, but convenience has a price”. Sage advice indeed.
To phone, or not to phone: that is the question. My advice as a Stage 3 Comp Sci student who pulled two all-nighters in a row this year? Try switching your phone off and going to your lectures for once.