The Google effect, also called digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can easily be looked up using internet search engines or other external digital sources, while better remembering where or how to find that information again. It was named and studied experimentally by the psychologist Betsy Sparrow and colleagues in a 2011 paper, which found that people who expected to have later access to information were less likely to remember the information itself but more likely to remember where to retrieve it. The effect is discussed as a modern instance of the broader phenomenon of transactive memory, in which people rely on external sources, including other people, as an extension of their own memory system.
Facts
Core ClaimPeople tend to forget information they expect to find again easily through an internet search, a pattern also called digital amnesia. 1 First Described Year Classification
Type of Phenomenon Sources
1. Wikipedia: Google Effect
Wikimedia FoundationWikipedia lead section, sentence 1
The Google effect, also called digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.
Wikipedia History section, sentence 1
The phenomenon was first described and named by Betsy Sparrow (Columbia University), Jenny Liu (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Daniel M. Wegner (Harvard University) in their paper from July 2011.
lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
The Google effect, also called digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.
View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.