How The Internet Affects Your Brain: The Connection Between Technology And Human Memory

It doesn't take an expert to confirm that people are spending more time on the internet. For those interested in exact quantitative measures, consider this: a Pew Research Center survey found one-fifth of Americans self-report going online "almost constantly" and 73 percent admitting they go online on a daily basis. Now, researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz and University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign have found how an increased dependency on the internet impacts our problem solving abilities, recall and learning. The study, published in the journal Memory, looked at the odds of a person reaching out to use a device as an aide tool when answering questions. The researchers divided participants into two groups: one that used their memory and another that used Google.