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'Googling' stuff ends up being really really bad for your memory

Most people are happy to rely on their phones instead of their memories when trying to recall something.

HAVING EASY ACCESS to Google and other search engines may be incredibly handy, but it comes at the price of remembering facts and other important information.

A report by Kaspersky Labs, which surveyed 6,000 Europeans, found that at least one in three European adults are happy to forget, or risk forgetting, information they can find online.

While most would try to remember the answer to a question first, a third (36%) would immediately turn to search engines like Google while almost a quarter (24%) would forget the answer as soon as they would use it.

Although memory does play a part in this, just not in the traditional way as most felt it was necessary to remember where they found a fact online instead of the fact itself.

This extends to remembering other pieces of information like phone numbers. While most adults are able to remember their home phone number when aged 10 – 15, more than half would have to look up their children’s number while the majority would have to look up the number of their children’s schools.

Although the majority surveyed say that this is down to there being too many numbers, addresses, and handles to remember now because of the many different ways we can communicate now.

It probably comes as no surprise that most people would be upset if they lost their devices since it’s where they store personal information like photos and contacts.

The report surveyed 6,000 people aged between 16 and 55 from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Benelux earlier this year.

Read: The Moto X Play: A large battery helps push a solid Android phone forward >

Read: There are faster ways to sort out your phone’s photo space problem >

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Author
Quinton O'Reilly
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