How Technology Is Warping Your Memory

Furthermore, technology advance not only alters the way we used to think, but also takes part in changing the way our memory works. As Nicholas Carr wrote in Wired in 2010, "The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory, the scratch pad of conciousness, to long-term memory, the mind's filling system" (qtd. in Gregoire, "How Technology Is Warping Your Memory"), and technology is changing the way we use our faculties of attention and concentration. We used to proud of ourselves about the amount of phone's numbers we can remember, now we have our phone to remember it for us. We used to have a sense of accomplishment when we can memorize facts that others don't know and used it for our argument,

As Carr explained in Wired, "While our long-term memory has a nearly unlimited capacity, the short-term memory has more limited storage, and that storage is very fragile. A break of attention can sweep its content from our mind" (qtd.in Gregoire, "How Technology Is Warping Your Memory"). With every technological advance, the content that takes up our attention keeps increasing. No one in the modern days seems to be able to leave their phones, and always having the urge to check it every 15 minutes, either for text message, e-mails, or simply how many "likes" they have gotten from a Facebook's post. Multi-tasking is not something to be considered briliant anymore, since anyone that can operate a computer can do it. The sources of entertainment seems to be unlimited, ranges from video games, movies, YouTubes, to the most influential invention of entertainment form: the social media. Our minds are constantly bombard with new information every minutes, and it's hard to maintain concentration. A new research has found that taking photos – an activity that is extremely popular in the smartphone era – actually can hinder our ability to actually remember what we're capturing on

However, along with the development of technology, is the negative effect to our mind that it also manages to bring. In the modern time, our mind not only have a handle an insane amount of information come from technological sources, but also have to deal with the burst of new mental diseases that are associated with the advance of technology. One of the source of these mental syndrome come from the emergence of the Internet. Google, the storage of knowledge in the new age, has helped to develop what is called "the Google effect" – which is "the tendency of the human mind to retain less information because it knows that all answers are only a few clicks away" (Dashevsky, "Eight new mental illnesses brought to you by the Internet"). Researcher has come to a conclusion that "the limitless access to information has caused our brain to retain less information" (qtd. in Dashevsky, "Eight new mental illnesses brought to you by the Internet"). Another mental illness in the technology era that Google also be a part of is "Cyberchondriacs" – an excessive health anxiety attack generated by online searches (qtd.in Lebowitz, "Cyberchondria: Do You Have Serious Health Anxiety?"). From the growth of Internet comes the birth of the social media, a place where everyone has a chance to connect to anyone around the globe. With this invention, humanity socialization seems to