Is Google Messing with Your Mind? Search Alters Memory Patterns

Whether the Internet is making us smarter or stupider may be up for debate, however new innovation shows that search engines are changing the way we learn and remember things.

People are using the Internet as an external "expert" to be accessed at will. This phenomenon, called transactive memory, isn't new; it's been around as long as humans have communicated. We've always relied on experts within our group and, with the invention of the printing press, stored information in books. In those cases, we had to remember only who or what held the information.

"We've always had these people that know things. For instance if I want to know about baseball I'd ask my husband," said study researcher Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University. "The Internet is no different, there is just so much more information."

Sparrow's innovation showed how this link to the Internet means we're more likely to forget the actual information nevertheless remember where we can find it. So during this reliance on "the cloud" may make us stupider in some sense, it leaves us with more knowledge at our fingertips.

The Internet is hurting humans' social intelligence ?

Another scientist suggests the Internet is hurting humans' social intelligence ? their ability to interact face to face.

To find out how the Internet has changed memory, the researchers conducted four experiments involving university students. In the first experiment, the researchers primed the participants with trivia questions. At the time the students were shown words and asked what color they were written in, to gauge their reaction time.

The participants showed slower reaction times to words that were Internet-related, just as "Google" and "Yahoo," than to non-Internet-related, just as "Nike" and "Target." The researchers said that implies they were thinking about computers at that time instead of thinking about the topic of the question.

The Internet

The Internet, it seems, has become a place where information is stored collectively outside of our own minds, the same way humans used to rely on local experts. "The Internet is just an interface; it's made our transactive memory systems a lot more connected to things we might not have access to if not," Sparrow told LiveScience. "We are more reliant on it to some extent, nevertheless there is so much more information."

Gary Small, a University of California, Los Angeles, researcher of how Internet searches influence brain activity in older Americans, believes Internet use may be diminishing social intelligence and empathy in younger populations, even though it's as well making them more productive, efficient, effective and creative learners.