Taking photos can ruin your memory (apparently)

Research in the USA indicates that taking photographs rather than concentrating on surroundings impairs the memory. This report in The Telegraph suggests that people are less accurate in recognising the objects they had photographed in a museum compared with those they had only looked at.

This doesn’t come as a surprise, although much depends on the photographer’s attitude. The thoughtful photographer tends to be selective in subject material and probably remembers the circumstances more vividly because of this. On the other hand, the modern trend to manic snapping almost certainly does impair the memory.

It isn’t a new phenomenon. Almost all advances in technology reduce the mind’s or the body’s natural abilities. We are less willing to walk the long distances routinely tackled in previous centuries because we now have transport. Mental arithmetic skills have foundered since the invention of the personal calculator; our memories are less acute because we now know that we can find any fact in seconds. In history whole sagas were carried word perfect down the generations until printing made these skills less important. Nowadays many an academic degree is based on cut-and-paste from Wikipedia, despite universities’ efforts to stop the practice.

The hope is that all this outside help frees up the brain for higher things. Perhaps we are more capable of great things with our memories uncluttered up with the the trivia that computers excel in storing. Perhaps.