Download Teacher's Notes  Download Student's Worksheet According to researchers, we are increasingly losing our ability to remember things. A recent study shows that a third of women under 30 cannot remember their own phone number or recall the birthdays of close friends or relatives. In addition, a study of 150 people aged between 20 and 35 reveals that one in ten people in this age group suffers from severe memory problems. As a professor at Japan's Hokkaido University explains, “It's a type of brain dysfunction. Young people are losing the ability to remember new things, to pull out new data and distinguish between important and unimportant information.” Scientists believe that there are various reasons why people are experiencing problems with their memories. In today's world, we rely increasingly on technology to help us remember and organise everyday things. We use computer calendars, mobile phones and automatic navigation systems. This means we do

not have to remember very much at all to keep our daily lives running smoothly.

At the same time, we also have to remember more to make all this technology work for us. We are often overloaded with data such as PIN numbers and passwords. As we get busier and busier and our lives become more hectic, we try to multitask to fit more in. All too often, our brains cannot cope with trying to do so many different things at once.
 
As one researcher explains, “We are living in cognitive overload. Humans are designed to do one thing at a time. There is a limit on how many things our brains can cope with simultaneously.” Scientists estimate that we are expecting our brains to cope with as much information in a single day as our great grandparents received in an entire week 100 years ago. Until we learn new ways to train our brains to cope with these demands, we will continue to forget all kinds of small things to cope with all that we ask ourselves to do.

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