New research shows that snapping photos on vacation offloads your brain’s processing power—meaning you’re actually making it harder to remember the best parts of your trip.
EXPERT OPINION BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM @ENTRYLEVELREBEL
I just got back from a lovely vacation in Greece and my phone is stuffed with pictures from the trip. All those picturesque beaches and scenic villages are great for sharing our travels with friends and family. But will they help or harm my ability to remember my getaway?
New research recently published in Memory & Cognition looked into the question. It came up with a worrying answer for those in the habit of constantly snapping pics of their vacations (and their lives).
More photos, fewer memories
To figure out the effects of constant photo taking on memory, a team out of Binghamton University recruited nearly 900 volunteers for a series of experiments. For instance, in one test subjects were asked to remember the contents of a computer screen either with or without taking a screenshot to aid them. In other variations, they were given other tasks to do before the memory test, or the time before the follow-up test was shortened or lengthened.
No matter how the researchers varied the experiments the results remained the same. Taking a picture made people perform worse on tests of memory.
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Obviously, if you are staring at a photograph in an effort to remember a specific detail (What was the name of that restaurant we visited?’ or ‘Was that dent in the rental car there when we picked it up?’), then having a photo helps. But otherwise, taking a picture of something makes it less, not more likely you’ll remember the specifics of the moment later.
Study lead author Sophia Fabrizio was not subtle when explaining her everyday takeaway from the study. “Unless you are actively reviewing those images as cues for elaborative memory retrieval, it is unlikely to benefit you,” she said.
How to remember more of your life
It’s always a good idea to be skeptical of single studies. But this paper is far from the first to find that taking photos seems to give your brain permission to remember less.
Source: www.inc.com
