Constantly depending on Google to find a word you can’t remember or transferring most of memory responsibly to smart phones could be damaging your brain. Indians increasing dependency on smartphone could be causing “digital amnesia”, according to a study done by security software developer Kaspersky Lab.
“The mind is a muscle and it if it’s not used for the reasons it was made, it will become lazy,” said Altaf Halde, managing director (South Asia), Kaspersky Lab. He said that digital amnesia should not be taken lightly. “Yes, a smart phone has become almost necessity for anyone who lives in today’s society and it’s an essential professional and personal tool for communication. However, it is very important to limit ones dependency on it primarily because of its addictive properties,” he added.
Kaspersky Lab conducted a research in the country between June and July 2015 and found “shocking facts” about the reliance on smart-phones amongst the Indian population. Some 50 people surveyed treated the Internet as an extension of their brain. It said that since 73 per cent of them use their smart phones to connect to the Internet, misplacing the phone can be a cause for serious concern amongst most Indians. “Memory is first to get effected and since digital communication has become incredibly high with websites like Linkedin and Twitter, our minds can’t possibly store so much of information without some help,” it said.
The trend of smart phone dependency seems to decrease as the age of the test group increased. It is because smart phones have not been around for long enough to influence a 55 year old the same way it’s influencing a teenager, said the report.
The survey said that it seems clear that this is not just a topic of reliance but rather something more severe, an addiction. “It’s an addiction to the digital world that has managed to engulf us so strongly, that our own minds are beginning to work more like Google and less like a human being. Almost 50 per cent Indians aren’t interested in remembering facts as much as they are interested in remembering their source.
