TedEd-34

Is Google Killing Your Memory?

In 2009 a plane was flying from New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. As it cruised on autopilot at
16,000 feet, it encountered a massive storm front. Approaching the airport, the plane's controls
began to shudder loudly, a sign the plane was losing lift and might stall. The pilot took action. He
pulled back on the controls, lifting the plane's nose. This was precisely the wrong thing to do –instead of preventing a stall, he caused one. The plane spun out of control, and plummeted into ahouse killing all on board. How had this pilot forgotten his basic emergency training? Is technology
ruining our memory?
We're all living in the age of Google. When we Google one thing and Wikipedia another, we're notrelying on our brains but on our fingertips. Is it making us dumber? First you have to consider there
are two main types of memory, non declarative memory for skills, emotions and movement; like how

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Is Google Killing Your Memory?

to ride a bike. And then there is declarative memory, for facts and information, like your phone
number or the capital of Australia. So when we use technology to look up information, we'reextending our declarative memories. But is that at the expense of what's in our brain? Thehippocampus is a major part of the brain we use in declarative memory function. It gives us theability to retain and recall memories about facts, like the largest animal on earth, and events, likeyour first kiss or the first CD you bought. The formation of new declarative memories relies on boththe hippocampus and a region around it, the parahippocampal gyrus. So what happens when wehave information at our fingertips and we don't need to remember facts anymore? Well the process
in our brain of how we form, retain and recall memories remains the same. What changes is what
we choose to form memories about. Instead of remembering more facts, we remember where tofind them – this is called The Google Effect.
In one study, participants who were told they could later look up the answers online did not makethe effort to remember general trivia. When asked a question people actually thought about
computers and search engines instead of searching their own memories for the answer. The use of
external memory systems is called transactive memory and it is not new. Einstein once said, I do
not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. Plus we've relied onother people to remember things for us like a husband or wife. Now there is a third wheel in therelationship – Google and it is connecting us like never before. As for that lump of matter inside ofour heads that's connected too. For our declarative memory, using technology just means we'retweaking our memory hard drive so we remember where the files and folders are, where we can findinformation, not necessarily the facts themselves. This will probably happen more and more as ourrelationship with devices grows. But it's not necessarily a bad thing! fMRI scans showed that forpeople who are internet savvy, areas of our brains are way more active searching for information
online than when reading a book.

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Is Google Killing Your Memory?

In our brains our hippocampus is still working the same way, we're just choosing to retain the mostefficient way to find information, and that is usually online. We're all sharing the work ofremembering, and it makes us collectively smarter. It is actually pretty adaptive. The only
disadvantage is when you need knowledge on the fly. For split-second decisions, all you can searchis that lump of matter inside your head.