# Could internet use be affecting my memory?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-internet-use-be-affecting-my-memory/293519>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 8, 2005, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-internet-use-be-affecting-my-memory/293519 "2005-03-08T11:56:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ed655f/32.png) [@Lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lola)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-internet-use-be-affecting-my-memory/293519/1 "2005-03-08T11:56:10Z")

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I have noticed that I find it much more difficult to drag things up from my memory and have been wandering if internet use is adversely affecting my memory?  
My reasoning is as follows;  
Before I had the internet and I needed to remember some obscure fact I would spent many annoying hours trying to get to this fact and usually it would eventually come to me. Nowadays I just go to the nearest computer and look it up hence my neural pathways concerned with memory retrival are shriveling up. Of course I could just be going senile and am trying to come up with excuses while I still can.

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**Author:** ![cluelessnoob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df788c/32.png) [@cluelessnoob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cluelessnoob)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2005, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-internet-use-be-affecting-my-memory/293519/2 "2005-03-08T12:01:30Z")

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Maybe, but who needs memory when you’ve got Google? The calculator may have lead to a decline in computational ability, but that’s only because it makes it irrelevant. Why bother trying to remember things when you can just look it up?

Eventually, anyway, I hope we’ll all get implanted neural uplinks to the Net and all the world’s information will be just a thought away 🙂 Sweet.