Is the internet making us stupid?

We now take in far more information every day than people did before the internet, and the world produces an almost unimaginable amount of new data daily. It is a fair question to ask what that does to memory.

The worry is old. Every new medium, from writing to television, has been accused of weakening the mind. That does not mean the worry is wrong this time, but it does mean we should look at how memory actually works before deciding.

How memories are made

Memory depends on consolidation. Information has to be learned, repeated at spaced intervals and followed by proper sleep before it becomes long-term memory. Without repetition, it follows the forgetting curve and fades.

The forgetting curve is one of the oldest findings in psychology. Most of what we learn is lost quickly unless we come back to it. Each time we revisit it, especially after a gap, the memory becomes more stable. Sleep plays a central role, because it is when the brain replays and reorganizes what it took in during the day.

In other words, memory is not a recording. It is a process that needs time, repetition and rest.

What the internet changes

When information arrives faster than we can consolidate it, it never stays in working memory long enough to stick. Working memory is small. It holds a handful of items for a short time, and a constant stream of new input keeps pushing things out before they can be processed.

The brain remembers where to find the information, not the information itself.

So the brain does something clever. Instead of storing the content, it remembers where to find it. Psychologists call this transactive memory: the internet becomes an external storage unit.

Transactive memory is not new. Couples, families and teams have always split up what they remember. One person knows the finances, another knows the birthdays, and everyone knows who to ask. The internet simply became the partner who knows everything and is always available.

Adaptation, not decline

That is not the same as getting stupider. It is a change in strategy. We remember locations instead of facts. For a lot of information, that is a reasonable choice. I do not need to memorize a protocol I can look up in seconds, as long as I know where it is and can judge whether it is reliable.

The risk is not that our brains are failing, but that we forget to deliberately consolidate the things that truly matter. Understanding is built on knowledge you actually hold. You cannot connect ideas, spot an error or think critically about a topic if all of it lives somewhere else. Searching is fast, but it does not give you the background you need to know what to search for, or whether the answer makes sense.

My perspective

My practical advice is simple. Decide what you want to own, and treat it differently. Revisit it, space it out, test yourself, and sleep on it. Let the internet hold the rest. That is what I tell students, and it is how I try to work myself.

I wrote this in 2019 as a Concordia Public Scholar. It reads even truer in the age of AI assistants. The tools now do more than store information. They summarize and answer for us, which makes the choice of what to keep in our own heads even more important.