Facebook and Instagram are ‘killing off our memories’
Study finds that smartphones and social media harm rather than enhance ability to recall
‘Using media may prevent people from remembering the very events they are attempting to preserve’
THE obsession with smartphone photographs is affecting our most precious memories, according to new research.
Scientists have found that people become so distracted by taking pictures that they can’t actually remember what they have seen.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, said using smartphones alters our memories by taking us away from the moment.
The researchers took hundreds of participants on a self-guided tour of a church and encouraged them to note what they saw. A week later, they were quizzed on the visit. Those armed with ipods with cameras, who took pictures as they went, recalled it less accurately.
The researchers say this proves that devices such as smartphone cameras alter memories.
According to the science, when we create memories neurons in our brains link sensations such as what something looks or feels like. But when we are distracted, these are not stored in our brains but instead live on forever on social-media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Emma Templeton, the researcher in psychology at Dartmouth College who led the study, wrote that “participants without media consistently remembered their experience more precisely than participants who used media”. She added: “Together, these findings suggest that using media may prevent people from remembering the very events they are attempting to preserve.”
Previously, studies have shown how constantly having a mobile phone in our hands has a “brain drain” effect that reduces people’s intelligence and attention spans.
In a separate study, researchers at the University of Texas found that people are worse at performing simple tasks and remembering information when they have a smartphone within sight, even when it is turned off.
Furthermore, posting pictures on social media can actually alter our perception of how we recall events.
Alixandra Barasch, a cognitive scientist at New York University, has researched how smartphones change what we notice. Using Christmas as an example, she said that so-called Instagrammers asked to recall their experience of the festive season would visualise it from an “outsider’s perspective” as if looking at a photograph.
She said: “When people are in more of a third-person perspective, they’ll have less intense emotions when they relive the experience, whereas if I stay in the first-person perspective, I feel the genuine emotions I felt.”