What is ‘The Google Effect’?

‘Digital amnesia’ is also known as the Google effect

A new study shows that the human brain doesn't hold on to information if it's easily available online. Reseach was conducted by Dr Esther Kang at the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Cologne, Germany and then published in the ‘Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.’ 

Googling information actually makes us more likely to forget things, according to research

“Having information at one’s "fingertips" through electronic devices such as computers and smartphones often leads to reduced attention and diminished recall.” Dr Esther Kang explained in her paper, 'When externally stored information is easily accessible and retrievable, individuals are not inclined to deeply process the details since they can easily look up the information whenever needed. 

Dr Kang conducted a total of three studies – dubbed 'learning', 'forgetting' and 'subscribing'. 

The first experiment tested the ability of undergraduate students to recall the details of an online credit card offer. The higher the ease of finding information was perceived, the lower the recall of the details of the credit card offer, Dr Kang found. 

Various other reports have suggested this is affecting our long-term memory as well as our short-term recollections, with some claiming it is even weakening our intelligence. For instance, a simmilar study published in October by Kaspersky Lab found that the majority of participants across Europe can't remember their children's phone numbers and half of people in the UK admitted they don't know their partner's phone numbers.

This is ostensibly because they know the information is readily available on their phone, so there is no need to memorise this. Compare this to 20 years ago when most people could recall phone numbers of their immediate family members.

This penomenon is known as 'digital amnesia' or 'the Google effect'. Googling information actually makes us more likely to forget things, compared with reading it in a book. Hence human brains are not inclined to “deeply process information on search engines” as we know the information is easily available - we will not bother storing it in our minds.