See through your mind’s eye
With the smart phone camera, are we in any way altering how we might remember our everyday lives?
With smart phones becoming practically ubiquitous, almost everyone now wields a camera in his pocket. So, it has become almost second nature for us to click and capture not just special moments, but even mundane experiences like shopping for clothes, drinking chai at a roadside eatery or riding in a taxi. Whenever I take my child to the park, I am amazed at the number of young couples who spend an entire evening taking umpteen pictures of themselves in varied poses against different backdrops.
We digitally seize slices of life and then share them with family and friends on social media platforms. Our snapshots are also stored for posterity. As we are now inundated with images, some significant, most trivial, it might be pertinent to ask whether there are any psychological ramifications of constantly viewing the world through a camera’s lens. Are we just capturing memorable moments for us and others to see or are we in anyway altering how we might be experiencing and remembering our everyday lives?
A study published in 2013 in Psychological Science by Linda Henkel examines the effect of taking photos on a person’s memory. During a guided tour of an art museum, subjects were asked to observe some objects and photograph others. Subsequent testing showed that participants’ memories of photographed objects was compromised compared to their recall of directly observed objects. People remembered fewer objects and their locations, and fewer details of the objects when they focused through the camera’s lens. Henkel also found that this “photo-taking impairment effect” was nullified when participants zoomed in on an object while taking photos. Perhaps, the act of zooming in enhances not only the camera’s capabilities but also our own focus.
Why do people have more impoverished memories of objects they photograph? One reason could be that the act of taking the image comprises your ability to attend to the object in front of you. As your focus (pun intended) is on clicking the perfect image, you don’t register what you are clicking as much. Your attention is divided between taking the shot and viewing the object. Thus, while you look at the object for a few seconds and immediately whip out your camera, you are less likely to look at the object with your full attention. In a study published in the Journal of Vision in 2006, David Melcher found a linear relationship between memory for visual details of viewed objects and the time spent viewing them.
Dependence on gadgets
Another reason why the act of taking photos may compromise our memories possibly relates to our growing dependence on gadgets. Knowing that an image will be stored on your phone, you may put in less effort to remember the details of what you are viewing. In fact, a study published in Science by Betsy Sparrow and her colleagues in 2011 lends support to this idea. When people expect to be able to find certain information on the Internet, they exhibit lower recall of that information. Thus, when you take pictures, you know that you can always go back and view them. As a result, you don’t really take in the moment in its entirety.
Commenting on the absurdity of modern trends, writer Michael Foley says, “There is the inability to experience directly and the need to film everything to believe it has happened…” As we click away, many of us are gradually ‘outsourcing’ our memories to our phones and cameras. But we have to watch ourselves so that we don’t end up feeling as tethered to our device as Audrey, a sixteen-year old interviewed by MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her book, Alone Together. Audrey says, “If Facebook were deleted, I’d be deleted… All my memories would probably go along with it. And other people have posted pictures of me. All of that would be lost. If Facebook were undone, I might actually freak out.”
In order to avoid being in a potential predicament like Audrey’s, we don’t necessarily have to give up using digital devices. However, we need to be more mindful of how, when and why we use them. With regard to our cameras, we need to remind ourselves that viewing an object or scene is a multisensory, cognitive, emotional and visceral experience. Likewise, our memories contain multiple aspects. We may recall our first glimpse of the view from the mountaintop and still feel a tingling sense of awe at the majestic expanse. Or, we may be enveloped with warmth as we remember the impish, toothless grin of an eight-month old.
In contrast to actual experiences and memories, a photo is purely visual. Even a video cannot capture our unspoken thoughts and feelings during an experience. Of course, a photo can evoke similar feelings as a memory, provided we processed the event deeply in the first place.
So, instead of mindlessly clicking images whenever we feel the urge or see others doing so, perhaps, we need to be more selective in what we choose to click. Sometimes, it might be preferable to relish the ‘moment’ without relying on external mnemonic crutches. As writer Karen Joy Fowler reminds us, “An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.” Thus, it might be refreshing to go on a camera-free holiday once in a while to experience the pleasure of living in the present and storing images in our mind’s eye.
The author is director, PRAYATNA. Email: arunasankara@gmail.com
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