You don’t have to be an internet expert in order to know we’re increasingly relying on the Internet when it comes to… well, pretty much everything. However, recent studies suggest that this ease of access to the vast resource of information is affecting our memory and thought processes for problem-solving and learning.
A thing called ‘cognitive offloading’ is the tendency to rely on things such as the Internet as a sort of aide-memoire, and researchers have now found that this tendency increases after each use. So while it might seem logical that memory is something that happens inside the head, it’s now clear that it’s slowly but surely becoming something that happens with the help of things outside the head.
In the study, researchers conducted experiments to determine our likelihood to reach for the Internet to answer questions. Participants of the experiment were divided into two groups to answer some difficult trivia questions. One group used only their memory, while the other used Google, and then the participants were given the choice of answering subsequent easier questions by the method of their choice.
Interestingly, the participants who previously used the Internet to answer questions were significantly more likely to revert to Google for easier questions than those who used just their memory. In fact, 30% of the participants who firstly consulted the Google failed to even attempt to answer a single easy question from the memory.
This is quite worrying if we take into account that a lot of the things we read on the Internet are simply not true, half-true or plain wrong. With new technologies our memory will continue to change, so it’s just as important to think about Internet security as it is about the sources of information we read.
Chanwoo's Weekly Tech 