Taking More Pictures Leads To Worse Memories

Digital cameras and their offspring, camera phones (or phone cameras) have lead to something of a democratization of photography; anybody can shoot, edit, and print good photos with a device that fits in your shirt pocket. But does it come with a cost?

According to an albeit small study, events that are photographed are less likely to be stored in the photographer's memory. Assuming that moments that are photograph-worthy are also of importance to the photographer, that means you are least likely to remember the moments you want to remember the most. Why is that? According to Fast Company, one possible reason is that you mentally dismiss the need to remember things which you know will be preserved by the camera. One final interesting note, subjects that were zoomed in on were MORE memorable than those that were just observed by the naked eye, and subjects even remembered details of the item that hadn't been zoomed in on.