Google effect: Search more, remember less
The downside of having it all just a click away
🏷️ Categories: Memory, Software.
You're chatting with someone and a question comes up that you don't have an answer for. You pull out your phone and Google. “Here it is!” You instantly have the answer to what you wanted to know. You continue the conversation, but the funny thing is, after a few hours, you don't even remember the fact you googled.
Luckily, all you have to do is pick up the phone again, it takes you 1 second.
It's a typical case of “Google Effect”, the effect of not remembering what you read.
What is the Google Effect?
Also known as “digital amnesia,” it is our increasing inclination to forget information that we know is easily accessible online. Instead of recalling data in our memory, we remember where and how to look for it.
“Why study that if it's on the internet?” That's the phrase any teenager would say.
A study by Betsy Sparrow, a psychologist at Columbia University, showed that when people know they will be able to access the information at another time, they tend to retain less of the content itself and focus their memory on the location or means of retrieving it. In other words, Google, ChatGPT and all digital tools work as an extension of our memory, they are transactive memory.
Using a metaphor, we are moving from remembering what the book says to remembering which bookshelf has the answer.
It's not important to remember information, it's important where it is. And that has consequences.
False omniscience
Instant access to information creates a false perception of omniscience.
Many people confuse the ability to search for information with the act of understanding it. With the internet, searching is so easy that it leads us to overestimate our understanding of complex topics simply because we can provide explanations for everything at the click of a button. Imagine someone searching for “how does an internal combustion engine work”. Even if he reads all the information, if he were asked to explain the process in detail without access to the internet, he would know nothing. Even worse if he were asked to design an engine.
You have a lot of information, but very little understanding.
Do you know how to make a combustion engine after asking ChatGPT?
Can you explain the current economic situation after looking at a couple of figures?
You have all the medical information at your fingertips, can you make a diagnosis?
We live in a time of abundance of data, but this does not translate into greater wisdom, we must continue to do the work of understanding in order not to remain in the superficiality of repeating data and arguments without understanding them.
How to understand more?
Use Feynman's technique to master learning.
Write down on a sheet of paper the information you have read and start drawing an outline detailing in your own words how the concepts you read are related. Go down to the maximum level of detail and explain everything around that concept. You will see how much you understand from what you read and you will notice that it was not so easy to explain what you read in 1 second on Google.
False omniscience is detected when you cannot go deeper or explain causes.
When you only see the tip of the iceberg.
In this age we can search for information at the speed of light, but the work of understanding it still takes the same amount of time as it did 100 and 1000 years ago.
Having all the information in 1 second does not make you understand everything in 1 second.
Do you know how a combustion engine works after asking ChatGPT?
You could only explain the basic features, but you could not detail the physical and mechanical processes involved. However, when we start learning something we advance quickly and that elevates our confidence long before our knowledge.
At that point we are so ignorant that we don't even know how little we know.
Do you know how to make a combustion engine after asking ChatGPT?
Do you know how to explain the current economic situation after looking at a couple of figures on the internet?
You have all the medical information at your fingertips, would you know how to make a diagnosis?
Most of the iceberg does not show, it is underwater and diving is more tiring, but diving is necessary to not be fooled, to have critical thinking, to be less dependent on the opinions of others. When you go deeper, you learn the complexity of things and begin to navigate life with mastery.
Don't settle for instant knowledge and take the time to understand slowly.
✍️ It's your turn: Do you remember more how to find the information than the information itself? I think everyone more and more people have Google as their best friend for any doubt.
💭 Quote of the day: “In new situations, the most complicated rules are the ones no one bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.)” Willa Cather, Fangirl.
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776-778. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745