because I think it wields a double edge sword.

On the one hand, we live pretty distracted lives today.

We're pulled in so many directions between the texts alerts

and the emails and the Snapchat and Instagram.

It's a lot.

And if we're distracted, we can't pay attention.

If I can't pay attention, I can't make new memories.

If I don't give something, my attention,

my brain can't form a memory of it.

Your brain wakes up and pays attention to

what's new and surprising and "Whoa, that's emotional!

That's never happened before!"

If I want to have a lot of memories for what happened

in my life, I need to be available to what's happening.

And so if I'm always on my phone and I'm looking down,

my best friend from kindergarten might be in the line

in Starbucks in front of me,

and I won't notice and have a chance

to have that happy reunion,

because my attention in my head is buried in my phone.

There's definitely downside to social media

with respect to mood disorders and bullying and self image

and all of that.

Yet, there's a lot of upside as well.

Your chronology of what happened can be captured

there quite nicely, somewhat like a photo album,

but even more in depth,

because now I've got the photos with the captions.

I can have people tagged.

I can be geotagged for the location.

All of that information, the comments can be a rich trigger,

an association, a cue,

that can remind me of that event and day in my life.

So, in going through your profile page

on Facebook or Instagram,

it's a nice way of this visual diary of revisiting

and reinforcing and strengthening your memories

for what happened.

I don't have to remember everything.

Having a word stuck on the tip

of your tongue is a normal glitch in memory retrieval.

It's just a byproduct of how our brains are organized.

If I can't remember the name of an actor in a movie,

I can Google it and I'm not making my memory any weaker.

It's not gonna give me something called "digital amnesia".

This is an urban myth.

You can look up his name and then read more about him.

And now I'm building more associations,

and it might lead me into having a conversation later

and learning even more.

Interestingly, young people don't

perseverate on this notion that they need

to come up with it by themselves.

I think because young people have been tethered

to devices since childhood,

they don't hesitate in outsourcing the job.

So, I don't need to know all the details

of the Peloponnesian War.

I can look it up and use that information

to think about things and make connections

and have conversations and live a fuller life in some ways.

So, with respect to technology today,

life is an open-book test.

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