Learn Something New

The Internet is killing your brain. Here's how to fix it.

''You’ve likely had the experience of having to Google a certain topic numerous times before you actually commit the fact you wanted to memory. Or maybe you have a certain piece of information stored in your email or your smartphone’s contacts that you constantly have to look up on your device every time it's needed. This phenomenon is called “transactive memory”: By entrusting information to outside sources, like a smartphone or a book or even a close friend, our brain fails to prioritize the act of memorizing that information.

While this effect has been known for some time, a new study has found we’re actually fooling ourselves into believing this addictive nature makes us smarter. According to an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, we give our own minds credit for what the Internet knows, even if we haven’t committed online content to memory. “Searching for answers online leads to an illusion such that externally accessible information is conflated with knowledge in the head,” claims the researchers. Every time you find a fact online, your brain convinces you it’s learned the information even when it hasn’t, leading to “a systemic failure to recognize the extent to which we rely on outsourced knowledge.”...''

By Gillian Branstetter