The Google effect, also called digital amnesia,[1] is the tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.
[2] This effect may also be seen as a change to what information and what level of detail is considered to be important to remember.
In the final part, subjects again typed trivia statements, and were told each had been saved in a generically-named folder (e.g. items, facts).
[4] The term "digital amnesia" was coined by Kaspersky Lab for the results of an unreviewed survey in 2015 by the security vendor, which said, "The results reveal that the 'Google Effect' likely extends beyond online facts to include important personal information.
First, people are primed to think of computers when asked general knowledge questions, even when they know the correct answer.
Additionally, those recalling information learned via the Internet showed decreased activations in several brain regions—including the bilateral occipital gyrus, left temporal gyrus, and bilateral middle frontal gyrus—compared to the encyclopedia group.
Unlike in traditional transactive memory, the information is not lost without the Internet, but merely slower and more difficult to find.