YOUR 20s: TECHNOLOGY’S ALREADY MAKING YOU FORGETFUL

AFTer the dramatic growth spurts of your childhood and teenage years, by the age of 25 your brain has hit peak performance. It’s also at its h eaviest — a round 3 lb — a nd t he d ifferent p arts a re i ntricately w ired up, making it the best it will ever be at storing, cross-referencing and recalling information.

As a result, twentysomethings perform better than any other age group at remembering the names of new people, recalling p hone n umbers a nd h olding n umbers i n t heir h eads l ong e nough t o d o mental arithmetic.

even so, one in seven still believes they have trouble remembering things. Studies are finding that young people are becoming increasingly forgetful, often because they are trying to do too much at the same time.

A study by researchers at the university of California found that using mobile phones, computers and other gadgets at the same time prevents y ou p rocessing a nd s toring information properly.

Scans reveal that this may be because the hippocampus, a part of the brain vital for forming new m emories, is used less when people are distracted.

And all adults, regardless of age, forget things from time to time.

In a recent study of healthy adults, the average number of m emory slips, such as putting the coffee jar in the fridge, was around six per week, irrespective of age, gender and intelligence.