Technology's Impact on Memory
Reliance on technology may lead to a loss of old memories’ synapses due to disuse. When the brain forms new memories, new synapses are created. However, some old synapses are lost to strengthen the connections in new synapses so that new memories form (Arnold, 2022). As social creatures, humans have never been expected to remember everything by themselves. We have always relied on other people for information, but that source has changed now to include the Internet. However, there is a difference between recalling information independently and relying on the internet to provide information for you. This makes it important to occasionally try to recall information by yourself rather than going straight to the internet. This is because you may falsely believe that by searching on the internet you are simply validating what you already know (Ingram, 2021). However, it may be that you would not have been able to recall that information due to the synapses of that memory not being reinforced enough.