Are All of Your Photo Memories Actually Making You Forget?

We’ve all done it; we’ve all taken a zillion pictures on that beach vacation or at a wedding. And why not? It’s easier than ever with a camera burning a hole in our pockets at all times. Not to mention, it’s not just easier to take the well-timed photo, it’s easier than ever to share our Instagrammed lives. But is all that memory-making actually making you forget? A new study in the journal Psychological Science says it’s quite possible.

The study, which set out to find out how taking photographs impacts our memory, used undergraduate students as subjects. The students were led on a tour around a museum and instructed to photograph certain objects and simply observe others. The following day their memory of what they’d seen, and clicked, was tested. The result was what the study’s author, Linda Henkel of Fairfield University, describes as the “photo-taking-impairment effect.”