Jim Kwik describes digital dementia: how smartphones outsource our memory functions, making us forget phone numbers, directions, and conversations. He warns the brain works like a muscle that atrophies without use, and constant reliance on Google Maps and contact lists weakens our recall abilities.
is digital dementia. Digital dementia. This is a term in healthcare where we're outsourcing our memories to our devices and these become our external hard drives. Before Google Maps, I used to be able to remember directions.
Yeah. I was thinking to myself several times, I'm like, why can't I remember directions anymore?
Or phone numbers. I mean, how many phone numbers did you and I know growing up? All of them, we had to. Literally all of them. And now, how many do we, the average person here, how many?
I know my wife's because she's my wife.
Right, and most people don't even know their significant others either, but maybe they know them as their own or maybe And not that I want to memorize 500 phone numbers, but it should be concerning when we can't remember one, or a PIN number, or our hotel room number, or a passcode, or a conversation we just had. It's use it or lose it when it comes to the brain. Our brains act like muscles, but if I put my arm in a sling for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't even stay the same. It would, it would atrophy.
