Introduction

I read something a few days ago that's been sitting uncomfortably in my chest.

Shae Omonijo, a PhD candidate at Harvard who studies how we stay human in the age of AI, wrote an essay arguing that we're blaming AI for a problem that started decades ago. She says the internet already broken our ability to think deeply. AI is just finishing what we started.

And I think she's right.

But I want to talk about something slightly different. Something I've noticed in my own work, my own habits, my own brain. Because we didn't just lose our ability to think deeply. We forgot how to remember.

The Google Effect 

There's a term for this: "cognitive offloading."

It means outsourcing your thinking to external tools. Instead of remembering information, you remember where to find it. Researchers call it the "Google Effect"; we've trained our brains to search rather than store.

A 2024 study found that people who frequently use AI tools showed "significantly reduced performance on tasks requiring sustained attention" compared to people who don't. The more you offload, the weaker your internal memory becomes.

Here's my embarrassing confession: I don't know my partner’s, my parents', or my best friends' phone numbers without looking at my phone. I am even thinking about my own. I've had the same number for years. But I never had to remember it. My phone dials for me. My contacts are stored. Why would I waste brain space on something my device already knows?

Except that my brain has now decided nothing is worth remembering. Why memorise a client's name when it's in my CRM? Why remember meeting notes when they're in Notion? Why hold onto an idea when I can just prompt ChatGPT later?

My phone isn't just in my pocket. It's in my head. Occupying the space where memory once lived.

The Paradox of capturing everything

Here's a recent study that i’ve read while searching for this blog: 

Researchers took people to a museum and split them into groups. One group just looked at the art. Another group took photos. A third group recorded videos.Then they tested everyone's memory.

The people who just looked remembered significantly more than the people who took photos or videos. Why?

Because when you photograph something, your brain says, "Okay, I don't need to encode this. The camera's got it." The researchers called it the "cognitive offloading hypothesis",  you're transferring the work of remembering from your brain to your device.

And… we do this all the time now.

Concert? Film it.
Sunset? Photograph it.
Conversation? Voice note it.
Idea? Screenshot it.

We're documenting everything and remembering nothing.

I have around 20,000 photos on my phone. I couldn't tell you what's in 70% of them without scrolling. I took them to remember. But taking them is what made me forget. Ironic, right? 

The smartphone on your desk is making you dumber (even when it's off)

Another study.

Researchers asked people to complete cognitive tasks. Some people had their phones on the desk in front of them. Some had their phones in their pockets. Some left their phones in another room entirely.

The people with phones in another room performed significantly better. Even when the phone was face down, and turned off. Even when people said they weren't thinking about it.

Just the presence of the phone reduced their available cognitive capacity. Why?

Because part of their brain was working to keep from checking the phone. That's cognitive effort. An effort that could have been used for thinking.

I'm writing this with my phone face down next to my laptop. Actually, I’m working all the time with my phone on the desk.  And now I'm thinking about it.

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The part where I realize I'm part of the problem

At Solveo, we produce a lot of content. Blogs, reports, strategies, studies, e-books… Fast.

And yes, we experiment with AI tools. A lot.

And what I've started noticing lately is that I'm losing the ability to hold complex ideas in my head. Let’s say… When I started working in marketing 7 years ago, and i was writing blogs, I used to be able to think through an entire blog structure,  intro, body, conclusion, examples, transitions, i used to read a lot before writing one… and hold it all mentally while I wrote. Now? I need to outline it in a doc first. Then I need to reference the outline constantly. Then I need AI to help me connect the pieces. 

My working memory is shrinking. Is it not? 

And it's not just me. A 2025 study on AI tool usage and critical thinking found that younger participants (heavy AI users) showed "higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores" than older participants.

We're not just offloading memory. We're offloading thinking. And the more we offload, the less we can do without the tools.

The internet started this

Shae's essay argues that AI didn't start this decline. The internet did. AI is just accelerating it. She's absolutely correct.

The internet took 40 years to rewire our brains. AI is doing it in months.

Every time I ask ChatGPT to "brainstorm ideas" instead of sitting with the problem myself, I'm weakening the neural pathways for creative thinking.

Every time I use Grammarly instead of learning why a sentence feels wrong, I'm offloading my understanding of language.

Every time I let AI summarize a document instead of reading it myself, I'm training my brain that comprehension is optional.

And… It feels efficient.  It feels like productivity.

But what if we're just... getting worse at being human?

The transactive memory problem

There's a concept called "transactive memory",  the idea that we divide memory labor between people. You remember where we parked. I remember what time the reservation is. Together, we're smarter than either of us alone.

Except now the "other person" is the internet. And the internet never forgets. So we don't bother remembering.

Researchers found that when people expect information to be available online later, they remember it less. They remember where to find it, but not what it said. We're becoming a species that knows where everything is but can't recall anything.

What I'm trying to do (and failing at)

I don't have solutions. I have experiments.

I've started writing by hand first. Not everything. But ideas. Outlines. First drafts of important things. It forces me to think before I type. To hold ideas longer. To wrestle with them. I've started putting my phone in another room when I need to focus. Not always. But sometimes. 

I've started trying to remember things. Phone numbers. Meeting details. Random facts. Not because I need to, but because I want to see if I still can.

YES! It is hard.

My brain doesn't want to work that hard anymore. It's been trained for convenience.

But I also know that every time I choose the harder path,  remembering instead of searching, thinking instead of prompting, sitting with discomfort instead of reaching for the answer, I'm exercising something that's atrophying in all of us.

Conclusion

Shae ends her essay asking whether we'll build AI systems that strengthen human thinking or replace it. I think the answer is: we'll build both. And we'll choose the one that feels easier.

Because that's what we've always done.

We chose the smartphone over the paper map. The calculator over mental math. The spellchecker over learning spelling. Not because they're better for us. Because they're easier.

And now AI is offering to do our thinking for us. And I'm terrified we'll say yes. Not out of malice. Not even consciously. Just because… thinking is hard. And outsourcing is easy.

And we forgot what we lose when we stop doing hard things.

I will let this quote stay here as a conclusion:

We all understand the joys of our always-wired world—the connections, the validations, the laughs … the info. … But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs.

- Andrew Sullivan (2016)

Want to read more insights on AI? Read our previous blogs! 

Research referenced:

• "AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading" (2025)
• "Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity" (University of Texas, 2017)
• "Capturing the Experience: How Digital Media Affects Memory Retention in Museum Education" (2024)
• "Consequences of Cognitive Offloading: Boosting Performance but Diminishing Memory" (2021)
• "Google Effects on Memory: A Meta-Analytical Review" (2024)

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