Week 4: Is social media altering who I am and what I think?

In class this week we assessed some articles that made me think twice about what I thought I knew. For instance it came to my attention that maybe I personally do not know all that thought I did knowledge wise. If in fact all digital communication was lost, would I in fact know enough to continue to survive. Do I actually know all the things I claim to have learned during my four years in college? Or possibly even before that? How much have already forgotten? Would I survive in this world? 

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One article that stuck out to to me dealt with what affect taking a photo can have on out memories. One study conducted by Linda Henkel of Fairfield University, suggests that taking a photo of an item is actually more detrimental to remembering an experience than just living in the moment of it. 

"When people rely on technology to remember for them — counting on the camera to record the event and thus not needing to attend to it fully themselves — it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences," explains Henkel.

To test her hypothesis Henkel set up an experiment in the Bellarmine Museum of Art at Fairfield University, leading students a tour of the museum and asking students to take note of certain objects by photographing them or simply looking at them. The next day the students’ memory of the tour was tested, with the results showing that the subjects were less able to recognize the objects they had photographed compared to those they had only looked at.  

Henkel is currently investigating whether the type of object being photographed affects memory. Although her tests showed that students forgot objects in an art museum, this doesn’t mean that forget the people we photograph – or perhaps the students simply didn’t care for the art. However, Henkel is certain that the often-used excuse that we take photographs in order to review them later doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, simply because most of us never take the time to look over our digital archives.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/is-facebook-making-us-forget-study-shows-taking-pictures-ruin-memories-8994917.html