“When people rely on technology to remember for them, it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences.”
So reads a concluding sentence of this article: “Step Away From Your Cameraphone…” which discusses the harmful effects of constantly using our phones and cameras to document every moment of our lives. Heck, there’s even an actual disorder now, coined “Photo-Taking Impairment Effect”, which is another name for memory loss due to this allegedly unhealthy consequence of living a life through the eyes of social media rather than, well, your own.
The article mainly focuses on simply taking pictures, but this phenomenon is obviously for the sake of the novel ability to frame your life in pictures which show exactly the way you want it to appear to others on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the like–no more, no less.
There’s a lot that can be said. I would prefer to take a mildly amused stance and simultaneously be slightly disturbed that there is now a mental disorder for taking too many pictures. But honestly…maybe we should be looking more closely at the way that social media is replacing living real, genuine, uncensored lives.
