Slaves to our smartphones? New study details digital amnesia

Over reliance on smartphones and tablets is eroding our ability to remember, that’s the conclusion of a new study into digital amnesia. As more and more of our important information is stored online, less and less of it is stored in our brains – the study found that 47% of those surveyed aged 16 or older could not recall their childhood phone number, while 57% could not call their office without looking up the information. It also detailed the so-called Google effect, the study from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky found that 36% of those surveyed used search engines rather than recall to find out the answer to a question. Researchers from UCL and the University of Birmingham confirmed that not memorising facts contributed to what they called ‘digital amnesia’. Dr Maria Wimber said that it could prevent the build-up of long-term memories meaning we would merely process information on a ‘moment to moment basis’.