We spend most of our lives online these days. It’s something that we’re all too aware of and despite the wealth of knowledge we now have at our fingertips thanks to our dear friend the internet, people seem to have had mixed feelings about just how much time we spend logged on for a little while now.
The whole ‘digital detox’ thing has really taken off with more and more of us pledging to spend less time on our phones. Admittedly, I rolled my eyes pretty dramatically when a friend suggested I give it a go, but it looks like it might not be such a bad idea because research has discovered that the internet is making us use our brains less, and no one wants that.
In a study written in the journal Memory, Dr Benjamin Storm explained that using the internet to look things up is effectively making our brains lazy, reports Metro.co.uk. He wrote: ‘Memory is changing. Our research shows that as we use the Internet to support and extend our memory we become more reliant on it. Whereas before we might have tried to recall something on our own, now we don’t bother.’
It sounds worryingly familiar, doesn’t it? I challenge you to name a time when you were asked, or asked a question and didn’t reach for your phone or open your laptop to find the answer. Bet you couldn’t.
In Dr Storm’s study, two groups of people were asked some tricky questions. One group was allowed to look up answers online while the other had only their brains to get by. After that, they were asked some easier questions but were given the option to turn to the World Wide Web if they wanted to.
It turned out that the group who used the internet the first time around were more likely to do it again, so it looks like habit is a big part of the issue. The study explained that we’re so used to having all of the answers at the mere type into Google, we’ve kind of forgotten how to use our heads. We don’t really need to remember things anymore, and so we just don’t bother which is having a pretty big impact in the ways we think.
Of course, without search engine magic, there’s a whole lotta stuff we wouldn’t know. And heaven forbid not being able to immediately find the answer to how many days it takes to regrow an eyebrow (about 65, fyi). But it might be worth putting our brains to the test every now and again. You know, just in case you’re ever without our beloved 4G and need to come up with something interesting to say.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.