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: