February 5, 2025
Nature recently published an article featuring Carey Morewedge, Professor of Marketing, discussing how scientists are exploring how digital technology, including search engines, GPS, and AI, may impact our ability to learn and remember.
While concerns about “digital amnesia” suggest that heavy reliance on technology may weaken memory, research offers a more nuanced perspective. Studies indicate that tools like GPS can impair our ability to recall routes, and online searches can lead to an inflated sense of knowledge. However, there is no conclusive evidence that technology universally harms memory. In fact, experts argue that cognitive offloading, using external devices to store information, is adaptive, as it helps free up cognitive resources for other tasks.
Morewedge notes that some of the strongest data to support cognitive offloading are from a 2010 GPS navigation study showing that participants who used GPS were just as poor at recalling a route from memory as those who had never driven it before.
While technology does influence specific memory tasks, the broader effects on cognitive function remain unclear.
