Has Google made us forgetful?

The world is in the Information Age, we are able to access information on a plethora of subjects using the Internet. We are always connected to the Internet via computers, tablets and of course smartphones. Various information is available in the palm of our hands whether you can’t recall when the Battle of Bunker Hill took place or what the name of Lady Gaga’s last album was.  Yet, some may say that this easy access to information has made us all a bit forgetful, I’m referring to the Google effect, a phenomenon described by Betsy Sparrow. The Google effect states that people have a tendency to forget information that can be found online by using Internet search engines such as Google.

            We spend so much time on computers and smartphones that information is always accessible to us. It appears to be a trend that people will choose to forget or at least not retain information on things that can easily look up using a search engine. It’s almost as if we end reducing the memory capacity that our brains can process because we can connect to our “external hard drive” known as the Internet to look up any information that we choose not to store in the memory space of the brain. You can ask any engineer student if they truly remember the equation set for any subject and they’ll most likely reply no. For most engineering exams, professors allow their students to bring a cheat sheet with them filled with any information they find relevant from the course (e.g. equations, facts, examples) that can be applied to the exam at hand because students are not expected to remember all that information.

            In the research that Betsy Sparrow conducted she came across various results. In one of Sparrow’s studies she asked participants various trivia questions and by using key words relating to search engines came to realize that participants instantly thought of the use of search engines when it came to searching for information to answer trivia questions. In another of Sparrow’s studies, Sparrow tested giving her subjects some trivial information and told them that they would be saved into one of five generic “folder”. The subjects were able to recall the names of the folders with great ease and what Sparrow learned was that her subjects were able to remember where to find information even if they couldn’t remember details of the information itself.

            Based on Sparrow’s research it feels as though our society as whole has gotten accustomed to realizing where information can be found instead of what the information exactly is. We’re slowly progressing to the point where it’s better to have an understanding of an idea or a method of thinking instead of relying on just pure memorization. By solely memorizing something we end up retaining nothing. We’re at the stage where it’s better to have an understanding of information so that when we’re able to look it up on the Internet we can apply our basic understanding of the information with the facts provided to reach a more remarkable viewpoint that wasn’t viewable before.