If we want to work on our memory, we have to forget our cameras… Taking too many souvenir photos damages memory. Taking a lot of photos, for example, during a trip, would prevent the memories from being imprinted in our memory. The same goes for endless viewing with family or friends!
What if amassing hundreds or even thousands of souvenir snapshots during a sightseeing excursion or a family celebration actually had the opposite effect to what you wanted? Admit that many of us, before family celebrations, fear the slide show of the brothers-in-law, especially since, thanks to digital technology, it’s free and there are no longer any limits.
Machine gunning is not good
Imagine that the fact of tirelessly strafing the places that we absolutely want to remember, would paradoxically make us lose our memory. A study published in the journal Psychological Science, studied the impact of the use of the camera on the memory of museum visitors.
Students were asked to observe a few objects, either by taking pictures of them or just looking at them intently. The day after the visit, the researchers carried out tests to assess the students’ memory. In the end, those who had just observed the objects had better memories. The others, the photographers, had more difficulty remembering certain details. People pull out their cameras so quickly, almost without thinking, to capture a moment, that it’s at a point where they even forget what’s going on right in front of them.
These researchers did a second test. They evaluated the memory of photographers by using the zoom on a single detail of an object. As a result, these volunteers seemed to remember the object in question as a whole better, rather than the detail they had focused on. This shows how different the eye of the mind and the eye of the device are. When we look with our eyes we remember incredibly more details than those of a photo
We can conclude that, to keep memories in memory, when we amass many digital clicks as is often the case today, it is absolutely necessary to store them carefully and take the time to observe them attentively … Without bothering others!
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