Scientists warned about the danger of the habit of taking screenshots on a smartphone

The habit of taking screenshots on a smartphone worsens the memorization of what is depicted in them—and provides no benefit in return. Psychologists have called this effect "digital amnesia": it operates unconsciously and automatically. The study was published in the journal Memory & Cognition.

Researchers from Binghamton University conducted seven sequential experiments involving a total of approximately 677 students. Participants were asked either to simply view images—such as works of art—or to take screenshots of them, after which they were tested on what they remembered.

The difference was notable: participants recognized viewed images in 78% of cases, while those saved as screenshots were recognized only 69.5% of the time. Memory for details suffered even more: the accuracy of recollections about an image's origin was 71.3% for simply viewed images and only 53.5% for those that were screenshotted. Moreover, screenshots impaired memory even more than regular photography did.

Initially, the researchers hypothesized that screenshots function as a memory "offload": the brain delegates the task to the device, freeing up resources for other activities. But this hypothesis was not confirmed—in subsequent tasks, those who took screenshots performed no better than the others. In other words, a person loses memory of what was saved but gains nothing in return. The authors advise against relying on screenshots as a substitute for attention: if information is important to remember, it is better to consciously examine it.

Psychologists have observed the digital amnesia effect before—for example, people remember paintings in a museum worse if they photograph them rather than simply looking at them. The mechanism apparently relates to the fact that the very act of saving shifts attention from the content to the action, and the brain seemingly absolves itself of the responsibility for memorizing, even though this provides no real "safety net."