An interview with S.M. Stone

Q: “Your research shows that using the Internet to access some information makes one more likely to use it again to access other information. Can we say that this habit is an addiction?”

A: “I wouldn't go as far as calling this behavior an addiction. It appears, at most, to be a tendency that Internet users may be developing as a result of retrieving information online. Previous research has taught us that once we become familiar with using a certain strategy to say, solve a problem or think up a solution, we can become "fixated" on using that same strategy to solve problems in the future. In relation to our recent work, those who answered questions with the help of the Internet became fixated on using the Internet to help answer additional questions compared to those who originally answered from memory. Interestingly, those who became fixated on the Internet also spent less time waiting before using the Internet than those who were not fixated—presumably because they were spending less time searching their own memory for possible answers. It is likely that the more familiar we become with using the Internet to retrieve certain types of information, the more we will come to rely on it (as opposed to our own memory) to retrieve that information in the future.”

Q: “How has the Internet and the means of data storage changed people’s behavior?”

A: “For one thing, the Internet offers us access to an incredible amount of information—a depth and breadth of expertise that, until recently, has never been available. It comes as no surprise then, that we are constantly gathering information online and communicating that information to one another. The Internet has made storing and sharing information easier than ever. For this reason, having access to the Internet is likely to influence how we prioritize information in mind and how we choose to exercise our memories in relation to it and other external sources.”

Q: “Is there any relation between having easy access to information on the Internet or on a cell phone and our difficulty in memorizing that same information?”

A: “Research on cognitive offloading has offered some evidence to suggest that information perceived as accessible is more likely to be forgotten than information perceived as inaccessible. By saving phone numbers into a cell phone or writing a reminder on a calendar, one may feel as though that information is not important to remember because it can be referenced. This behavior seems to be strategic, given the amount of mental effort required to encode and maintain information in mind. If one assumes that the Internet will always be accessible, retrieving information online may reduce the burden of needing to remember trivial information one’s self. In contrast, if one were to become fixated on using the Internet to obtain information and then lose access to it, they may find themselves unable to remember information that they had previously offloaded onto the Web. Fortunately, the Internet will most likely remain an accessible information source as much of our world depends on it.”

Q: “How does the habit of going online to search for information affect our ability to memorize in the long-term?”

A: “Unfortunately, there is still much research to be done before any claims can be made about how the Internet will affect us in the long-term. One possibility is that an over-reliance on the Internet may lead us to offload too much information to the Web—potentially reducing our ability to use that information when thinking flexibly and creatively. With that said, I feel as though reliance on the Internet will prove to be more useful than harmful. The Internet is generally more reliable than our particularly fallible memories and contains new and conflicting information to help us update our knowledge of the world. Similarly, we seem to be much better off having the Internet as a means of communication than not.  I think that if the Internet remains a dependable information source, we stand to gain much more than we will lose by relying on it.”

Q: “What are the implications of not challenging our cognition when we have easy access to the Internet?”

A: “In our recent work, we found that those who became familiar with retrieving information online reported having a lower desire to engage in challenging cognitive behavior, soon after, compared to those who retrieved information from memory. This finding suggests that using the Internet may not only make us more likely to use it again in the future, it may also temporarily reduce our willingness to mentally challenge ourselves. The consequence of this behavior, though, remains an open research question.”