Are phones making us forgetful?

Got a question? Google it. Forgotten a name? Reach for your smartphone. As we are deluged with easyaccess information, literally at our fingertips 24/7, our brains seem to be getting weaker, leaving us with the attention span of, well, a goldfish… Radhika

It’s happened to us all. You’re in the middle of a conversation, and you forget what you said just two minutes earlier. Your mind goes blank, so you say the first thing that pops into it – and wish you hadn’t.

For most of us, this is mildly embarrassing. For Joe Biden, who recently did exactly this during a Democratic Party presidential debate while sparring with fellow candidate Julián Castro, it was viral news. The former vice president was immediately accused of forgetting his stance on healthcare – less than a month after he also seemed to forget the name of former president (and one of his closest friends) Barack Obama.

His gaffes have unsurprisingly become clips watched thousands of times, but Biden can take solace in the fact that he isn’t the only public figure to forget such basic details. Back when he was prime minister, David Cameron famously forgot his favourite football team (he said it was West Ham when he’s meant to be an Aston Villa supporter), something he blamed on ‘brain fade’. More recently, Gwyneth Paltrow forgot she’d appeared in a Spider-man movie (‘I just got confused’), while this summer, a Virginia politician may have lost his chance at re-election after he forgot to put his name on the ballot.

Many of us will be able to relate to the essence of these fails. In the words of memory specialist Nancy Franklin, an emeritus associate professor of psychology at New York’s Stony Brook University, ‘Memory is never perfect. And people definitely have word-finding or name-finding issues. We’ve all experienced lapses.’ But, in this modern, tech-fuelled world, with people reporting rising levels of stress and declining levels of sleep, are our memories actually getting worse?

Robert Bjork thinks this could be the case. A research professor at UCLA’S Department of Psychology, he says, ‘In some categories, such as our ability to recall phone numbers or addresses, we are far worse than we were before that information was readily accessible on our devices.’ The 80-year-old recently asked his students to write down all the phone numbers they could remember. ‘They were able to recall remarkably few – a tiny fraction of the numbers someone my age was able to recall at their age.’

This is why people who have grown up with abundant technology – now being referred to as the ‘Goldfish Generation’ – could be at a greater risk of memory decline. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s found that kids who grow up in this sort of culture might have deficits in the development of their prefrontal cortex [the part of the brain responsible for planning complex cognitive behaviour],’ says Franklin, who is in her 50s.

While there are still no concrete studies looking at memory decline since the rise of technology, there is some research that indicates our powers of recall could be deteriorating. A recent review by academics from Oxford, King’s College London, Harvard and Western Sydney universities found that our brains seem to be physically changing thanks to the internet.

As part of the research, a controlled trial found that six weeks of engaging in online gaming caused significant reductions in grey matter within the orbitofrontal cortex – the brain region implicated in impulse control and decision making. The review also showed that our smartphones are replacing our ability to remember facts.

‘It shows the internet could be making our memories worse,’ says one of the paper’s authors, Dr Joseph Firth of Western Sydney University. He explains that the rise of technology means we’re now storing information externally. Unlike previous generations who had to use a variety of sources – be they encyclopaedias or libraries – we now have it all in one place, our smartphones. ‘It means we’re less likely to use parts of our brain to engage in memory finding,’ he says.

The other problem with being constantly connected is that we have become easily distracted. Research published in the

found we spend an average of 19 seconds focusing on something online before we flick to the next thing, with 75 per cent of all on-screen content being viewed for less than one minute. ‘It’s not sufficient time to commit anything more than a headline to memory,’ says Dr Firth. ‘A distracted mind is less likely to take in information deeply, and engage with what’s on the screen. For example, the presence of hyperlinks – even if you don’t click on them – reduces your ability to process the information on the page because you’re thinking of where to go next. I think that’s definitely getting worse.’

A recent study from researchers at the Technical University of Denmark suggests the collective global attention span is indeed narrowing due to the huge amount of information the public is faced with every day, something being branded as information overload or ‘info-besity’. ‘The influx of information is reducing the amount of time that people are dedicating to individual pieces of information,’ says Dr Firth. There may still be question marks over how exactly the brain is being directly impacted by all of this, but Franklin says people are right to be concerned.

‘It’s not that memories are getting worse – we still have the same physical equipment as previous generations,’ she adds. ‘But our memory skills are deteriorating as we become more dependent on technology.’

For the middle-aged already facing declining memory (which naturally starts to wane in our late 30s), increased use of technology might only mean struggling more than ever to remember basic details. But for younger generations, who have grown up in a world of Google, Wikipedia, Alexa and Siri, it’s a worrying risk.

‘We’re growing up with a generation now heavily distracted, relying on cutting and pasting in their school reports rather than thinking hard on topics,’ says Franklin. ‘It’s not that this tech causes brain rot, but it may well be with developing brains that during the critical periods where it’s important to learn memory skills, to inhibit distractions, development is being impaired.’

Dr Firth agrees, and calls for more data to look at the impeded maturation of brain and verbal ability in today’s children and teens, especially after excessive tech use. ‘It’s not

‘We’re now less likely to use parts of our brain to engage in memory finding’

worth ignoring,’ he says. ‘For young people, I think things are getting worse. If people are used to having factual information at their fingerprints, and no one keeps a lid on that, it could result in people having worse attention spans, and less long-term memory.’ The doctor, who is in his 30s, admits he’s noticed a decline in his own spatial memory after years of relying on GPS navigation systems when visiting his home town of Leeds.

But technology is not the only thing contributing to this memory crisis. Other factors, such as increased stress, poor sleep and more sedentary lifestyles, are linked to it too. A 2018 study published in the American Academy of Neurology’s journal found that adults in their 40s and 50s with high levels of the stress hormone cortisol performed worse on memory tasks than those with average levels. Meanwhile, a study published in Science magazine this September proved the importance of sleep for helping us forget unnecessary information, detox our brains and thus improve our memory.

‘Poor sleep is a population problem, and we’re sure sleep is closely associated with the memory,’ says Dr Firth. ‘If you’re trying to protect your memory, the first thing to do is protect your physical health. An unhealthy body probably means a less healthy mind. High levels of inactivity and obesity put you at greater risk of dementia and cognitive decline. We seem to glaze over that – it’s not the sexy message, but it is a great concern.’

Almost 40 per cent of people over the age of 65 experience some form of memory loss. When there is no underlying medical condition causing this, it is known as ‘age-associated memory impairment’, but brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and other dementias are different and much more severe. Scientists still don’t know exactly why some people are more at risk than others, though in some cases the death of brain cells is genetic.

Symptoms of dementia tend to include not recognising family members, frequently forgetting recent events, and not noticing issues with your memory even though relatives are concerned. In contrast, normal age-related memory decline tends to include forgetting details of events a year ago rather than yesterday, and occasionally having difficulty finding words.

‘You’re at the top of your cognitive game in your 20s, then there’s a very slow decline that you can already see in your 30s, then certainly in your 50s, then really noticeable ones that freak people out,’ says Franklin. ‘Even for people who don’t develop anything clinically nameable, it gets more frustrating as you get older. We do know about the phenomenon of “use it or lose it”, which again tech can contribute to, both positively and negatively.’

The idea of ‘use it or lose it’ is essentially that by making an effort to remember more regularly, it becomes easier to remember in the future – and if we don’t do this, and rely on man-made devices to do it for us, we can lose that capacity. ‘Recalling information is a powerful learning event, in the sense that retrieving information makes that information far more recallable in the future than does reading that information or having somebody else present it to you,’ explains Professor Bjork

On the flip side, for the elderly there could be a benefit to using technology to remember things . ‘It can help you stay cognitively engaged into your older years,’ says Franklin. ‘It frees up cognitive resources, which can be fantastic – we call it cognitive offloading – where you’re outsourcing some of the thinking. You effectively give yourself more ability to think. It helps quite a bit with some of the memory skills that we’re worst at, like prospective memory, where you’re recalling a memory of something you’re about to do.’

With this possible positive side effect of the growth of technology in our world, Franklin urges people not to panic about a societal memory decline. She uses the analogy of books. ‘You can imagine people thousands of years ago being freaked out by books, because, like tech, they can make people potentially less engaged, and they offload knowledge.’

However, the analogy can only go so far, and Franklin suggests people who are noticing a decline in memory should take action – be it putting down their phone for several hours a day, focusing on trying to remember information rather than relying on the internet, or just making a greater effort to pay closer attention during a conversation. ‘The internet is a wonderful tool, but more than books ever did, this tech has risks associated with it,’ she says. ‘We have not yet as a culture learnt to manage it well. It seems to be intruding more and more on us over time.’

The answer now lies in finding a way to enjoy the benefits of our modern world without allowing our minds to become too lazy – not just for the sake of our own slowly declining memories, but for an entire techsavvy generation who are in danger of forgetting their own names.

‘We have not yet learnt to manage the internet well. It is intruding more and more’

Illustrations by Sébastien Thibault