Digital Smarts - Digital Amnesia

Memorized any phone numbers lately? Do you have to stop and think about your own number for a second before you tell it to someone else? You aren’t alone. Out of more than 1,000 Americans surveyed for a recent report from cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, more than half said they couldn't recall the phone numbers of their friends and neighbors. Forty four percent said they couldn't even remember their own sibling's numbers. This survey and other recent research shows that we are developing a collective “digital amnesia” -- replacing the memorization of specific facts with the knowledge that the information is digitally stored and can be looked up if needed. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We have access to more information than ever before, but by not storing as much in our brains, it might just allow us to think through things with more mental processing power.