Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Apr 7.
doi: 10.3758/s13421-025-01711-2. Online ahead of print.

The cost of saving: How photos and screenshots impair memory

Rebecca Lurie  1 , Sophia P Fabrizio  1 , Deanne L Westerman  2
Affiliations

The cost of saving: How photos and screenshots impair memory

Rebecca Lurie et al. Mem Cognit. .

Abstract

The photo impairment effect refers to worse memory for experiences that are photographed compared with those that are not. One proposed explanation for this effect is that photo-taking divides attention between the event and the actions required for photography. However, the results of the present study challenge this account. Specifically, we found that the magnitude of the photo impairment effect did not increase with task complexity, undermining the idea that divided attention is the primary cause. Across three experiments, participants viewed art presented on a computer or their own smartphones and either photographed or took screenshots of the images. Memory was consistently worse for images saved by any of these methods. Notably, screenshotting had particularly detrimental effects on memory, despite being the least complex saving method. Furthermore, the impairment did not vary based on whether participants used a familiar device (their own smartphone) or an unfamiliar, experimenter-provided camera. These findings suggest that divided attention alone cannot account for the photo impairment effect.

Keywords: Cognitive offloading; Memory; Photographs; Technology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval: The experimental protocol was approved by the Institutional Research Board at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Consent to participate: All participants gave informed consent to participate prior to participation. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Conflicts of interest/Competing interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest or competing interests to disclose. Open science and transparency: The data and data analysis files have been made available on the Open Science Framework and are accessible using the following link: https://osf.io/37anc/?view_only=1b97f5fbb3014f05b356ab76361b1f04 . The design and analyses of Studies 1 and 3 were preregistered. There is a preregistration available for Study 1 at https://aspredicted.org/Y32_6LD and for Study 3 at https://aspredicted.org/Q43_7PR .

References

    1. Anderson, C. M. B., & Craik, F. I. M. (1974). The effect of a concurrent task on recall from primary memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(1), 107–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80035-6 - DOI
    1. Baddeley, A., Lewis, V., Eldridge, M., & Thomson, N. (1984). Attention and retrieval from long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(4), 518–540. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.113.4.518 - DOI
    1. Barasch, A., Diehl, K., Silverman, J., & Zauberman, G. (2017). Photographic Memory: The Effects of Volitional Photo Taking on Memory for Visual and Auditory Aspects of an Experience. Psychological Science, 28(8), 1056–1066. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617694868 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Brady, T. F., Konkle, T., Alvarez, G. A., & Oliva, A. (2008). Visual long-term memory has a massive storage capacity for object details. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(38), 14325–14329. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803390105 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Carr, N. (2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us stupid/306868/

LinkOut - more resources