Mind Over Machine • Finding the Words

About This Episode

The memory we carry in our pockets directly affects the memory in our heads—and that impacts how we communicate. So, what are you doing to protect that precious time you have ... to think?

This week’s essay comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights directly to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.

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• Episode Transcript

  When was the last time you struggled to remember a piece of information? Maybe it was your best friend’s phone number, the name of the book you just read, or what you ate for dinner last night.

  Chances are you’ve experienced this feeling recently and much more often in the past few years. Because it’s not just you who is feeling more forgetful—it’s most of the world.

  For those who have come to embrace smartphones and other smart devices as part of our everyday lives, that experience of forgetfulness may be “digital amnesia” or “The Google Effect”. It’s a phenomenon first describedby Betsy Sparrow (Columbia University), Jenny Liu (University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Daniel M. Wegner (Harvard University) in July 2011.

  According to these and other experts, digital amnesia is the feeling that our brains are fast losing their ability to remember information. and if you've experienced it, you're not alone.

  The number of people experiencing digital amnesia 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 – common themes since March 2020 – directly impact our ability to remember and retain information.

  In 2021, memory researcher Catherine Loveday went searching for just how much of an impact technology was having on our brains, particularly through COVID. Eighty percent of those she surveyed felt that their memories were worse than before the pandemic. That stress, isolation, and exhaustion mentioned above, coupled with the distraction we find in digital communications: scrolling through social media, texting, checking emails, and searching the internet, all take a serious toll on our ability to recall and remember information.

  Before smartphones, our minds stored all of the information we needed, and our memories would naturally build cognitive maps to help us navigate through our days. For smartphone users, that is no longer true. We rely on our smart devices to retrieve even the most basic information, reducing our mind’s ability to do the same work well.

  It’s not just information recall that’s at risk here. Smartphone overuse could be harming our ability to be insightful, too. According to science writer Catherine Price, “an insight is the ability to connect two disparate things in your mind. To have an insight and be creative, you have to have a lot of raw material in your brain. Just like you can’t cook a recipe if you don’t have any ingredients: you can’t have an insight if you don’t have the material in your brain, which is long-term memories.”

  If you’re struggling to be insightful, and it’s limiting your ability to effectively communicate, it may be time to reduce your reliance on smart devices. But how, you wonder, when it feels impossible to break away from technology? Consider these three healthy habit-forming activities. With time, they can negate The Google Effect and hopefully help you remember where you left your keys, too.

  1. Institute a Weekly Screen-Free Day.

  Choose one day each week when you put all technology away: laptops, smartphones, tablets, TV, and other digital devices that are regularly in reach. And by away, I mean away and out of reach. If you need an alarm clock, use a good old-fashioned one. If you need a watch, grab one without any technology-enabled features. Break away, just for 24 hours each week, from all technology. Without the temptation of technology, you’ll start to rely more on muscle memory, helping to return some of that critical brain function— and you’ll give your brain and eyes a break from those screens. (For the next 60 days, I’m choosing one weekend day to go tech-free. Care to join me?)

  2. Exercise Your Memory.

  Instead of relying on our phones for driving directions, recipes, workouts, or the morning news, start printing critical information, like phone numbers, favorite recipes, or your weekly workout routine, to see if you can train your mind to remember the information. Read a physical book this summer instead of an e-book. Pick up a newspaper here and there instead of scrolling through the feeds. Make small changes that reduce your reliance on digital technology. As much as I love going paperless for its positive effects on our environment, physical paper is a critical component in helping to reduce memory loss. It allows us to exercise our brains to find information within the pages rather than asking our phones to find that information for us. (I’m breaking out my cookbooks and saying goodbye to Pinterest, at least until September. What technology platform might you give up?)

  3. Simplify Your Digital Life.

  Researchers say that if you spend time trying to retrieve information from your memory first before looking it up, you are more likely to remember it later. So, while having access to endless information at our fingertips can be a blessing, it can also be a curse. The more we can simplify our digital lives, and reduce our reliance on digital devices, the more quickly we can overcome digital amnesia. This week, clean up the apps you’re not using and remove them from your phone. Silence notifications and set limits on your devices. Take the steps that work for you to break your reliance on the machines around you. (My phone now has a small handwritten note on the back that says “Use your brain” to help break my go-to-technology-for-the-answer habit.)

  Bottom line: The memory in our pockets directly affects the memory in our heads—and that impacts how we communicate. So, before you reach for the phone to help you remember something, give yourself time to think. Practice building back up your memory and brain function, and you should start to see that digital amnesia clear up, too.