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Millenials Digital Internet of Things

Vox Pop: Are we reducing our brain capacity by relying on search engines?

By Naomi Taylor, Client Services Manager

2Merkle

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The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

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July 7, 2015 | 5 min read

It has come to light that people are suffering from digital amnesia, relying on search engines for information that we would have held closely to our heart before the advent of smartphones. Apps that store our personal information and wifi cities that are enabling us to access limitless information 24/7, are apparently leading to a dependence on digital to support our brain capacities. The Drum Network has asked its members if they believe that search engines are reducing our attention spans and giving us an excuse to not remember anything.

Imogen Pickles, Account Manager, Periscopix

We live in a world where everything you could ever need to know is at your fingertips- the vaguest feeling of curiosity can be satisfied in an instant. Because of this, we stop holding things in our heads which can be quickly searched for. There’s a feeling that computers are so much more reliable and trustworthy than our own memories, ideas and opinions. I’m not worried that we’ll stop remembering things- that’s not how people work. Having a way to quickly find out the answers to our questions means that have the tools to learn more, and interact with our knowledge and ideas without being held back by things we have forgotten or don’t know yet. I feel more worried when finding out new things becomes boring to people. Thinking deeply about an issue, searching for information about it and creating a well-informed opinion is a great joy, and it is somewhat cheapened when you can just search for something and find that somebody has already done all the work for you. As long as we remember to be sceptical, we’re so lucky to have so much knowledge available to us. Not everyone in the world is so lucky

Simon Bennison, Head of Strategy, Caliber

I think this is an inevitable result of data overload and such readily available access to vast amounts of information. We also notice a clear difference between the generations. Generation X-ers who grew up before mobile phones will rely on their memories in a very different way to millennials growing up with omni-connectivity.

With the sheer volume of answers available to us, the act of searching has become a skill in itself, not just something for SEOs. Education will need to adapt and learning how to search and navigate knowledge will become more important than what you can remember.

The advent of intelligent personal assistants, like Siri and Cortana, predictive search apps such as Google Now and the rising Internet of Things will reduce our need for active searching exponentially.

Of course, in a world where anything can be Googled, it's not the person who knows the most that wins; it's the person that knows what to do with it. For brands and marketers still striving for the elusive “right message, right time”, this means increasingly having to approach marketing from a technology perspective as well as an emotional one.

Harriet Checkley, Web Analyst, Periscopix

No - search engines like Google, and the ever expanding web, are facilitating access to a wealth of content which previous generations may have struggled to find. I don’t believe it’s a case of Google giving us Digital Amnesia or making us lazy, simply we have to be more selective with what we do remember due to the data overload our brains experience on a daily basis. Instead we remember what’s really important to us, the offline, practical, real-life content, rather than ‘how much is Kim Kardashian worth?’ or ‘who played that character in a film 10 years ago whose name I can’t remember and it’s annoying me’. On many occasions has Google been the saviour to my complicated excel query predicament; this is not to say I have ‘Digital Amnesia’, instead its facilitating knowledge sharing and enabling us to be more efficient in our day-to-day lives.

Anna Shirley, Account Manager, Periscopix

I don’t think search engines give us an excuse not to remember anything. I think that they actually facilitate things that you might’ve forgotten like the name of a nice restaurant or how you can get from place A to place B. In terms of reducing attention spans, yes they probably do contribute here but this isn’t just an issue confined to search engines. Facebook, Instagram, news apps and many other online sources all play a part here! We’re all guilty of sitting at the pub staring at a mobile screen so I wouldn’t say it’s the fault of search engines, it seems to be a wider issue, reflective of the hyper-connected world in which we live.

Millenials Digital Internet of Things

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