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Perception | The Google Effect
Memory forgets what convenience remembers.
THE THOUGHT
I catastrophize for entertainment. A game my mind plays when things are too calm. Sitting on a beach, I wonder where I would run if a tsunami appeared on the horizon. Walking through a city, I plot what to do if my phone were lost and I needed to call home.
Strangely, for that last scenario, memorizing phone numbers is never a solution.
I have called loved ones thousands of times. Their names appear on my screen. I tap. We talk. But if I saw their digits instead of their names, I would think it was spam.
Years ago I knew those numbers by heart. I remember punching them into borrowed phones, payphones and landlines.
Now my emergency scenarios have shifted. I have wild theories on how to survive unlikely disasters. A dead phone in an unfamiliar place would lead to all sorts of absurd modern adventures trying to reach anyone who matters.
Do you remember the numbers to call home?
Memory embellishes life. Forgetfulness makes it possible.
THE DIVE
Outsourcing Memory
The Google Effect is our tendency to forget information we know we can find online. This has evolved into what researchers call digital amnesia, offloading our memory to any device that stores information for us.
Birthdays of people you love live in your calendar. Directions to places you visit monthly require your GPS. The information feels known because access feels instant.
Psychologists Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, and Daniel Wegner demonstrated this in their 2011 study at Columbia University. Participants typed trivia facts into a computer. Half were told the information would be saved. Half were told it would be erased. Those who believed the facts would remain accessible remembered significantly less. When people knew information would be available later, they offloaded memory to the device.
The mechanism makes sense. We are better at remembering where information lives than remembering the information itself. Your brain treats Google like an external hard drive. Why memorize a fact when you can memorize how to retrieve it? The search bar becomes the knowledge.
A 2015 Kaspersky Lab survey across Europe and the United States found that around a third of people could not recall their partner's phone number without checking their device.
The researchers found that when information was explicitly marked for deletion, participants suddenly remembered it. Our memory simply prioritizes based on perceived need. If retrieval is easy, storage becomes optional.
But something shifts in this transaction. Nicholas Carr argues that the more information you commit to memory, the more material you have to work on and think about. When facts live in your mind, they connect to other facts. Patterns emerge. Insights form. When facts live in search results, they remain isolated. Retrieved when needed, forgotten immediately after.
A 2024 meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Public Health found that the Google Effect is closely associated with cognitive load and behavioural changes. People with larger existing knowledge bases proved less susceptible to these effects than those with smaller knowledge bases.
The tradeoff: we gain efficiency but lose the ability to hold multiple ideas simultaneously. To notice connections across domains. To think without looking up.
THE SHIFT
Strategic Forgetting
What if forgetting could be strategic? Can digital amnesia be engineered? Let us play with two lists:
First, information we want to carry in our minds because having it internally changes how we think. Maybe the plot structure of your favourite novel. The exact wording of a poem that shaped you.
Second, information we actively choose to forget. Phone numbers. Procedural steps we can look up. Facts that change frequently. Data that requires precision over understanding.
The difference matters. When we deliberately outsource memory, we free cognitive space for synthesis. For connecting ideas. For thinking rather than storing.
What if we curated our minds, keeping only what transforms how we see?
For what you choose to remember, use proven techniques like the Memory Palace method. For what you outsource, build systems that mirror how you think, like Tiago Forte's digital memory framework. Study the Forgetting Curve to understand your retention patterns.
The art seems to be forgetting the right things.
NOTEWORTHY
Read: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr — Why your brain physically changes when you outsource memory to screens.
Watch: Is Google Killing Your Memory? from TED-Ed — What happens in your brain the moment you decide to search instead of remember.
Read: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte — How to deliberately forget without losing what actually matters to your work.
COMMUNITY
Inner Lab
Last week, I asked: When was the last time you let something end instead of ending it yourself? Thank you for sharing your stories. Most responses stay private. Here are two who gave permission to share. If you are watching something fade without moving, you are not alone.
“My career. I've known for two years I'm in the wrong field. I have the savings and a plan. Just working on the courage. Every Sunday night I tell myself 'soon' and every Monday morning I'm stuck in another week I didn't choose."
“A friendship that stopped being real after her wedding. We kept showing up for another year anyway. When it finally ended, the relief was the most honest part."
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