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Trust your phone to remember?
The rise of Digital Amnesia

Smartphones. We carry them with us all the time. They are our companions, they help us find all the information we need within seconds, they even speak to us. It’s hard to imagine living without them.

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Digital Amnesia in practice

Smartphones have transformed our lives. They connect us to the people and things we care about and place information at our fingertips. Eight in ten of us relies on our devices more than we did five years ago. And it’s not just our behaviour that’s adapting – our brains are too.

Could you call your partner, your children or even a colleague, right now, without looking up their number? If you couldn’t, don’t worry. Most people are like you. We call this Digital Amnesia: forgetting information you trust a device to remember for you. And it’s OK.

Over the last 18 months, we have spoken to thousands of consumers and professionals across Europe and rest of the world, and discovered that:

  • Up to 60% of adults could phone the house they lived in aged 10; but not their children (53%), or the office (51%). Around a third couldn’t call their partners.
  • 46% of professionals say that trying to hold on to lots of little details stifles creativity, but those details contain the seeds of future ideas (75%) – a dilemma solved by storing details on devices rather than in their memories.
  • Two-thirds of consumers say that letting devices remember enables them to achieve more.

Do we trust our devices too much? Take the test and discover more.

The majority of connected consumers in the UK can’t recall critical phone numbers from memory, including:

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Digital Amnesia explained

Today you can unlock a whole universe of facts with a swipe of your smartphone. But do you struggle to remember any of your friends’ phone numbers? Kaspersky Lab’s David Emm explains the phenomenon of Digital Amnesia and how it affects us.

Friend in my pocket

Do we love our smartphoness more than our friends? Are we more productive with or without phone? Why can we not keep our fingers off our phones? Only three of a number of questions which psychologists at the universities of Würzburg and Nottingham Trent examined for us.

Seriously in love?

Marrying a smartphone - a strange idea? So thought Aaron Chervenak for most of his life but then he realized how much time he actually spends with his phone. And how important it is for him. So he did it.

Are you a Digital Amnesiac?

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We fail to protect our devices

27% don’t install extra IT security at their smartphone.

24% don’t protect their tablet with a security solution.

22% don’t protect any of their devices with additional security.

Interested in learning more?

Download our report on Digital Amnesia here.

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Find an infographic explaining Digital Amnesia here.

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Read the report on How Digital Amnesia influences our work life here.

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Download our report on Digital Companions gaining more importance.

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See why multitasking doesn't work in this infographic

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Read why we can't leave our hands off our phones in this report

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Download the full report on how we emotionally connect with our phones

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Read here how smartphones influence our concentration at work

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Read here to find out more about how smartphones have adapted the way we recall information

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Think of all the precious things on your Android

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