SALON

Tuesday, Jan 15, 2013 5:44 PM UTC

Study: People can remember more about Facebook than real books

But this might not be a bad thing! What the new research reveals about education, communication and memory

By

Topics: mind, Science, research study, Memory, Facebook, technology, Books, , ,

Study: People can remember more about Facebook than real books

Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of California, San Diego, tested how well people could remember text taken from Facebook updates and compared it to sentences picked at random from books. What they found is that participants’ memory for Facebook posts was about one and a half times greater than their memory for sentences from books.

Now before you slap your forehead and lament the death of the written word, consider the implications.

The study’s findings shed considerable light on the kind of information we are hard-wired to retain, revealing that our brains favor natural, spontaneous writing over more polished content.

To put it into context, think about your Facebook timeline. Sure, there are too many posts about babies, but there is other stuff on there, too. Responses to news stories, thoughts about the world. Usually casual, often gossipy, these posts, researchers say, are easier to remember than more formal, edited content. Basically, the closer to natural speech something is, the better we remember it. (Sorry, Judith Butler! I still love you!)

Researchers say these findings could change the way we approach education, communications and advertising. They also reveal something striking about the evolution of the human mind.

As reported by Science Daily:

Professor Christine Harris suggests “Our findings might not seem so surprising when one considers how important both memory and the social world have been for survival over humans’ ancestral history. We learn about rewards and threats from others. So it makes sense that our minds would be tuned to be particularly attentive to the activities and thoughts of people and to remember the information conveyed by them.”

Our language capacity did not evolve to process carefully edited and polished text, notes author Professor Nicholas Christenfeld. “One could view the past five thousand years of painstaking, careful writing as the anomaly. Modern technologies allow written language to return more closely to the casual, personal style of pre-literate communication. And this is the style that resonates, and is remembered.”

So will textbooks henceforth be composed in tweets? Will editors be sent to the bread lines?

No. But that doesn’t mean change isn’t coming, the researchers say. “Knowing this could help in the design of better educational tools as well as offering useful insights for communications or advertising. Writing that is easy and quick to generate is also easy to remember — the more casual and unedited, the more ‘mind-ready’ it is.”

 

Katie Mcdonough

Katie McDonough is an assistant editor for Salon, focusing on lifestyle. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com. More Katie Mcdonough.

Next Article

You Might Also Like

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

Gripping photos: The people of the Turkey protests (slideshow)

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • The protests take on a festive element as police forces move out of the park and square. Wearing a gas mask, this young man dances to traditional Turkish music in front of Taksim Square’s Ataturk Monument.

  • In Gezi Park since March 31st, this protester, originally caught off-guard by the Government’s teargas and water cannons, went out and bought a Russian army mask from WWII, preparing for what was to come.

  • This rambunctious boy seems to be enjoying the chaos. After taking this picture he threw a stone at the already destroyed building in the background.

  • Forming a line, the police face off directly with protesters in Taksim Square. After a while, they retreated and there was a general cheer – a back-and-forth dance that has been common since the beginning of this protest.

  • An elderly woman in Gezi Park reads the news. The tent community occupying the park was violently destroyed on June 16th.

  • Many different groups had set up booths to promote their cause in Taksim Square and Gezi Park. Standing in front of one, this man waves his flag while posing with conviction.

  • Many home-remedies are used to minimize the effects of tear gas. This woman has put a milky solution on her face, removing her mask after the tear gas dissipated. Before sunrise, the police came again for another round of teargasing.

  • People capitalize on the uprising -- selling flags, beer, gas masks, sky lanterns and spray paint to name just a few of the popular items.

  • On Monday morning, June 11, the police execute a strong offensive. Many plain-clothed police officers, like the ones seen here, clash with protesters in the side streets away from the main stand-off in Taksim.

  • The authorities seem to be most aggressive in the night, pushing protesters away from the square and park. After being teargassed this young woman catches her breath with other protesters on Siraselviler Street.

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 3 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves": Growing up primate

Recommendations