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In today’s article, Julian Omidi discusses a recent study that found the human brain might be able to retain information received from a Facebook post more readily than it can from a traditional publication. Julian Omidi asks the question, "Is Facebook good for your memory?"

We read books and take classes for our edification. We work to commit the teachings of highly respected academics to memory, and do our best to train ourselves to remember facts, names and dates for exams when we are in school. The traditional methods for memorization and study are reading, recording lectures and listening to them a second or even third time, and jotting down notes on flash cards. However, perhaps reading the information we would like to retain in the form of a Facebook message would help us to learn and retain information with greater ease and efficacy.

It appears that Facebook message posts and tweets might linger in our memories longer than perhaps we intend or even want them to.

In a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Scranton, a group of 280 undergraduate subjects was tested for their ability to retain different forms of text. They were asked to read 100 Facebook message posts and 100 sentences culled from authors of published books. The subjects were then given a follow-up list of sentences and asked to determine whether or not any of the sentences were in the original group. The test group was not only able to recognize more of the Facebook sentences, but they did so with a higher degree of confidence than the sentences written by published and edited authors.

The recall for the Facebook sentences versus the traditionally published sentences was so much higher that it could be compared to the memory of a normal individual versus someone with amnesia, according to the study authors.

The length of the sentences was not a factor in the subjects’ ability to retain them; the Facebook sentences were, on average, longer than the published ones.

The test subjects also had a stronger recall for Facebook phrases than for human faces. In a subsequent study, half of the students were given a series of Facebook sentences, while the other half was given a sequence of pictures of faces.  After the subjects had read the sentences and looked at the images, they switched activities. Like the original experiment, the subjects were able to not only recall more Facebook posts; they were able to do so with a higher degree of confidence than the human faces.

There are several theories as to why this phenomenon has occurred. Perhaps the brain can more easily absorb the relatively simple text of a Facebook message than the more complex philosophical musings of an experienced writer.  Maybe we have trained ourselves to value the commentary of our peers more highly than unfamiliar authors in order to facilitate a kind of social togetherness. Perhaps we are more able to relate to the stream-of-consciousness or conversational style of a Facebook post than we can to the careful editing of a writerly sentence. While it may seem to some as though the human brain could be devolving due to the culture’s high saturation of digital media, this new data could be useful in determining new and effective teaching methodologies that could benefit everyone.

By Julian Omidi


Healy, Melissa: Facebook entries more memorable than polished prose or human faces Los Angeles Times 1/16/2013 http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-facebook-prose-memory-20130116,0,4953315.story





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