Study conducted by Kaspersky Lab.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Modern people are forgetting relevant information because they’ve handed over responsibility for remembering important figures to their phones, a new study has found.
“The results reveal that the ‘Google Effect’ likely extends beyond online facts to include important personal information,” researchers wrote in the report. “Many consumers are happy to forget, or risk forgetting, information they can easily find — or find again online.”
Most people can’t remember the phone numbers of their children or their schools, or their work, the research found, but 47 per cent of people could remember their home phone number between the ages of 10 and 15.
For the study, Kaspersky Lab surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers aged 16 and older across the United States. The cyber security company has dubbed the phenomenon “digital amnesia” and revealed it applies across all age groups indiscriminately and equally between men and women.
Survey results showed that 91 percent of consumers can easily admit their dependency on the Internet and devices as a tool for remembering and an extension of their brain, while almost half (44 percent) of survey participants said their smartphone holds almost everything they need to know or recall.
“In many societies, having access to the Internet feels as stable as having access to electricity or running water,” Dr. Kathryn Mills, with the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, told Washington D.C.-based WTOP. “It would be interesting to explore further whether individuals in places where the Internet is unreliable feel greater need to remember contact details or facts, or have a different perspective on information access.”
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