Digital amnesia: Taking screenshots makes you more likely to forget information

Snapping a photo or a screenshot to remember something? According to recent cognitive research from Binghamton University’s Psychology Department, the practice may make you more likely to forget.

If you take photographs or screenshots during an experience, consistent evidence has shown that your memory of the information or event is degraded, explained Sophia Fabrizio ’22, MA ’24, a Binghamton University doctoral candidate in psychology and the lead author of “Digital amnesia: The aftermath of a screenshot.” Co-authored with Rebecca Lurie, MA’19, PhD ’23, and Psychology Professor Deanne Westerman, the article was recently published in the journal Memory & Cognition.

Known as the photo-taking impairment effect, the phenomenon occurs for material that the picture-taker doesn’t review afterward. According to other research, using photographs to retrieve and review memories may benefit long-term retention, Fabrizio said. However, many of us take more photos and screenshots than we can use — around 20 photos a day, with around 2,000 photos stored on the average smartphone, according to estimates.

“Unless you are actively reviewing those images as cues for elaborative memory retrieval, it is unlikely to benefit you,” she said.

Another study suggests that our memory isn’t impaired when photographs are captured automatically, using a wearable clip camera; this indicates that there’s something about the act of taking a photo or capturing a screenshot that impairs memory, rather than the knowledge that something is being saved, Fabrizio said.

Binghamton researchers conducted a series of seven experiments to explore the digital capture effect. Participants captured images of artwork and were tested on their memory; some experiments also used math problems to test whether participants’ cognitive resources were reallocated. None showed clear benefits of taking screenshots when compared to the degree of memory impairment for the captured images.

Potential mechanisms

One possible mechanism behind digital amnesia is divided attention: The act of capturing an experience takes away cognitive resources that would otherwise be dedicated to encoding the information in memory. While divided attention plays a role, it’s unlikely to be the main source of memory impairment; people show a comparable deficit when extra time is provided to view an art piece before or after taking a photograph, and when the capture task is made less difficult, which should minimize its effects. 

Another possibility is cognitive offloading, in which we do not allocate cognitive resources to remember information if it’s stored externally. Offloading allows us to redirect those conserved cognitive resources toward aspects of an experience that weren’t captured or toward unrelated tasks.

Individuals should only employ the strategy if the information is reliably saved and accessible. However, research has shown that memory remained impaired even when the picture-takers knew their images would be immediately deleted. With screenshots in particular, people were less likely to remember whether they captured an image or viewed a piece of art, and had worse memory for the art itself when it was captured. 

A third hypothesis is attentional disengagement, in which the act of taking a photograph or screenshot causes us to unconsciously distance ourselves from the experience. 

“This extends beyond captured information to the broader context of an event,” Fabrizio explained. “The poorer ‘source’ memory for whether the art pieces were screenshotted or viewed — and in the original museum study on this effect, worse memory for the location of photographed art pieces in the exhibit — provides some preliminary support for this account.”

This unconscious detachment may be sparked by a longstanding association between capturing images and the ability to offload information. Binghamton researchers and others continue to test predictions related to the attentional disengagement account. 

A better option for remembering information: break out a pen and paper. Writing something down — for example, taking notes during a lecture — forces us to process and organize the information into manageable bullet points, and draw connections. Known as “desirable difficulty,” the mental effort in this kind of processing may make us more likely to remember the information.

However, it’s not foolproof; sometimes, writing something down can lead to cognitive offloading — such as forgetting a friend’s birthday after we add it to our calendar and set reminders. Like the phone numbers in your contact list, you may no longer be able to remember the specific information.

Screenshotting can potentially supplement your memory if you take only a few intentional shots and review them later — similar to how a calendar reminder can support your memory of an upcoming event. But taking frequent screenshots and letting them accumulate unreviewed has the opposite effect, research shows.

“Taken together, the results of the current study suggest that we are likely harming our memory for information and experiences with the press of a button, and that this impairment may even extend beyond what is captured,” Fabrizio said.