The Internet Changes Our Brains

Access to Internet search engines, such as Google, changes the way we store and access our memories, according to new research published in the journal Science.

The study, called “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips,” found that, because of Google, we tend to use our brains to remember how to find information, rather than the information itself. In essence, we let Google store the information for us.

The process – called transactive memory sources – of remembering where to find information, instead of information itself, is not new. Before the Internet, for instance, you might remember who is a good speller or good at math, in case you needed help with how to spell a word or balance your checkbooks.

The difference now is that Google is a more salient transactive memory source, according to Dr. Betsy Sparrow, psychology professor at Columbia University, in an interview for The Newshour. Since Google contains a wealth of information, much more than the transactive memory sources of the past, and is easy to access, we are more likely to let Google store information for us.

In many cases, we use Google to find information that we already have in our memories because Google is faster than us at retrieving that information. Many of us probably already know, for instance, how many quarts are in a gallon, or who played the lead role in “Gone With the Wind,” but it might take some time for our brains to retrieve that information. Google is quicker than our brains at finding some information.

You might try to remember who played the lead role in “Gone With the Wind,” for instance, by picturing the actress in your mind, or remembering where you were the last time you watched the film. You also know, however, that you can Google “lead actress in Gone With the Wind” and find the information much quicker. Knowing that you can find it more quickly means that your brain is less likely to store that information in a quickly accessible way.

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One of the dangers of the excessive dependence upon the Internet and computers for information storage and retrieval is that if war or a natural disaster permanently distrupts the Internet and renders computers inoperable, we may find ourselves chipping sharp edges on rocks.