Technology and Short-time Memory

One of the greatest achievements mankind has made and improved on throughout the past decades is technology. In the past twelve years has been the most popular and successful technology launch, the first iPhone, which is basically a computer in your hands. Databases that can answer any question, cellphones that can recognize faces, and even virtual reality. Many great devices are out there, but at what cost? A huge concerning topic is the effect of human memory on these new devices. Since it is a “new” device, the effects can vary and are still unknown to a large percent of the world. Modern technology and “smart” products can affect people’s memory in a harmful way from absurd reliance to a much weaken memory.

The Google searches average number in a single day has increased from 9,800 in 1998 to over 4.7 trillion today. This may not be a surprise since the rise of modern technology increased drastically in those years, but it is certainly shocking to have that all knowledge at our fingertips, the “Google effect” is affecting the way we think and come to memorize things. With over 49% of people now carrying around s smart device on their smartphones, researchers concluded that the effect is the same. People are relying on Google to store long-term knowledge, instead of their own memory and brains. Very few people know that “Neuroimaging of frequent Internet users shows twice as much activity in the short-term memory as sporadic users during online tasks” (McDonald, et al, 793). Our brains have learned to get information quickly and then disregard it right after, and this becomes then stronger every time we do it. The more people continue to use Google instead of their own memory, the less likely people are to retain what they see.

The biggest part of our memory that technology will affect is our short-term memory. That is the working and thinking part of our brain. When we are constantly getting and using new information to process in our minds, we don’t realize that what we had on our minds is slowly slipping away, and we are saving the external information. Our brains use the information stored in the long-term memory to store important things and factors throughout our day. If we rely on Google to store everything, we may be losing out on an important part of ourselves. Joshua Foer, the author of a well-known memory technique book, shows different but simple ways to improve your memory without technology. “The brain best remembers things that are repeated, rhythmic, rhyming, structured, and above all easily visualized” (Foer,128). Here he explains that if people use simple techniques every day, they can easily improve their memory. He continues to explain the ways that helped him and other people with increasing their memory capacity.

Another way people are affected by technology is the fact of it being too addicting for people. Many people are addicted to their smart devices and are constantly using them for keeping track of stuff they cannot remember. This is a prime example of how reliant we are, we cannot remember simple things like groceries to get or what tasks to do for the day. Recent researcher professors studied the describe the way our memory is affected by technologies today, “digital technologies are implicated not just in how we remember but also in how we forget” (Elwood & Mitchell, 149). This shows how people can rely upon and forgot things easier because of the fact of smart devices being replaced with people’s memory from the fact of it being more accessible to jot it down than putting in the time to remember.

Technology can do a lot of different things for a lot of different people. For some people, it might help with improving their memory, which will help them normal day-to-day stuff as normal people would. Technology has the ability to assist practices that those people can improve their state of remembrance. Devices smartwatches and phones can help improve memory with practice. Researchers of the Cognitive and Behavioral Health Program describe the different ways they found helped different people, “another technology that has been adapted for easy use by individuals with severe memory impairment is paging devices” (Svoboda, Eva, et al,565). There could be many different devices that vary from person to person that can help many different people in the end. But for normal people, it is negatively affecting them because of the simple fact of the negative effects on the memory as a whole.