How Technology Can Help Us Remember Better

In the digital age, we now have the know-how to doc our lives in extraordinary element through images, voice recordings, and social media posts. In principle, this potential to effortlessly seize the vital moments of our lives ought to enrich our potential to recollect these moments. However in apply, folks usually inform me they expertise the other.

I examine the neuroscience of reminiscence and one query I hear repeatedly is whether or not know-how is making us “dumber”—or, extra exactly, whether or not it’s hurting our potential to recollect. For some, the query is motivated by fear concerning the period of time their kids spend on screens or cell gadgets. For others, it displays considerations about their very own reminiscence issues.

A typical worry is that there is perhaps a “use it or lose it” precept at play—that an rising dependence on our gadgets for reminders will lead us to lose our personal capabilities to recollect. This is perhaps true for sure expertise. If, as an example, you all the time depend on navigation apps in new or unfamiliar neighborhoods, you may not attend to options within the surroundings to create a psychological map that may permit you to be taught to navigate by yourself. Nevertheless, there isn’t a cause to suppose that counting on know-how to retailer vital info will in some way lead your mind to wither in methods which can be dangerous for reminiscence. In actual fact, I’m all for outsourcing mundane reminiscence duties, like memorizing telephone numbers, passwords, e-mail addresses, and appointments. I don’t have a photographic reminiscence—however my telephone does.

So, if know-how might help us “liberate house” for the issues we wish to keep in mind when we have to keep in mind them, why achieve this many people really feel like its presence in our lives is main us to type blurry, fragmented, and impoverished recollections?

The brief reply: know-how isn’t the issue—it’s how we work together with it.

To type lasting recollections, we have to give attention to what’s distinct concerning the current second, these immersive sensory particulars we will name again as much as reconstruct an expertise after we keep in mind. As we go about our every day lives, we normally do a fairly good job of specializing in what’s related, and for that, we will thank part of the mind referred to as the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex helps us focus consideration on and meaningfully course of what we have to be taught, to seek for recollections which can be “in there someplace,” and to maintain our recollections correct after we handle to recollect the fitting factor.

However, in a world the place our conversations, actions, and conferences are routinely interrupted by textual content messages, emails, and telephone calls, these talents get swamped—and we regularly compound the issue by splitting our consideration between a number of objectives. Multitasking could make us really feel that we’re being extra environment friendly. Many people even delight ourselves on our potential to change from one job to a different, nevertheless it comes at a value.

Learn Extra: Why Multitasking Is Dangerous for You

Every time we’re routinely distracted or deliberately toggle between completely different media streams (corresponding to studying a textual content message whereas sustaining a dialog), prefrontal assets are sucked as much as regain our focus. The result’s that we stay one step behind, and in any case is completed, we’re solely left with blurry, fragmented recollections.

Exterior of the office, we regularly use know-how to doc our lives. The proliferation of “Instagram partitions” and the throngs of individuals at concert events recording the motion with their smartphones illustrate how know-how has modified our lives. The ubiquity of smartphone cameras allows us to simply doc our experiences, but for many of us this hasn’t translated right into a extra expansive reminiscence for the non-public previous. Once more, the issue isn’t essentially with the know-how, however relatively that we’re filtering our experiences by way of the lens of a digicam.

Taking pictures doesn’t essentially have a great or dangerous impact on reminiscence. The crucial elements contain the way you direct your consideration and whether or not you meaningfully interact with the subject material. Our brains are designed to do extra with much less, by partaking meaningfully with somewhat little bit of high-quality info relatively than amassing a large catalog of knowledge. Once we give attention to “documenting” over “experiencing,” we don’t listen to what’s distinctive within the second, the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions that make an expertise distinctive—and memorable. With out these immersive particulars, one thing that was so vivid after we skilled it (a household trip or little one’s violin recital) can wind up feeling as distant to us as a narrative we learn in a e book. By attempting to document each second, we don’t give attention to anyone side of the expertise in sufficient element to type distinctive recollections that we’ll retain.

The damaging potential of know-how is exacerbated by a tradition of sharing experiences on social media platforms. Social media engagement can have a damaging impact on reminiscence, partly as a result of it entails multitasking (e.g., switching between recording the second and engagement with social media platforms) and will increase the potential for distraction.

Social media itself isn’t dangerous for reminiscence, per se. Like most types of know-how, it’s a software that when used correctly may even improve our reminiscence of an occasion, however the pictures we submit are sometimes accompanied by captions with temporary descriptions, relatively than a radical reflection on the occasion. Some platforms like Snapchat and Instagram tales, function photograph posts that disappear inside 24 hours—an apt metaphor for the best way during which senseless documentation can depart us bereft of lasting recollections for our experiences.

Learn Extra: Find out how to Make Your Thoughts Pleased, In keeping with Neuroscience

Expertise can improve reminiscence whether it is used constantly with ideas that assist us keep in mind. Thoughtfully taking photos or movies at opportune moments can orient us to what’s attention-grabbing and distinctive round us. My daughter, as an example, likes to selectively {photograph} vegetation and flowers that catch her eye on our nature walks, which permits her to pause and absolutely soak up these features of the surroundings as we’re experiencing them within the second.

After you’re taking these photos and movies, set up them in a manner that can permit you to discover them later (as we used to within the previous days with photograph albums) and ensure to revisit them afterward. Within the following weeks, revisit these pictures and use them as cues to mentally re-experience these occasions, bringing again as many particulars as potential. By utilizing the pictures virtually like a “check” of your reminiscence, and spacing out these assessments, you may improve your potential to retain recollections of your entire occasion, not solely what’s within the photograph. Journaling might be one other solution to improve reminiscence as a result of it permits us to check our reminiscence for an occasion and likewise combine it in a significant manner, in order that we will form our narrative of the expertise.

As with reminiscence itself, a key precept for know-how is that “much less is extra.” All of the life-logging on this planet is not going to allow us to recollect all our experiences, neither is {that a} fascinating aim within the first place. Our recollections for occasions are selective, however in addition they can have an excessive amount of element, which means, and emotion. By mindfully utilizing know-how in ways in which permit us to entry these features of our previous experiences, we will maintain on to what issues.