Memorising facts has become obsolete; we should prioritise critical thinking instead

As human beings we are obsessed with gathering information. We want to consume it, we want to store it, and we want to share it with others.

This practice has changed drastically since the inception of the internet and new technologies, primarily the smartphone, which give us easy access to it.

Between 2012 and 2017 the global internet population grew from 2.5 billion to 3.7 billion and 90% of all data that exists today was created in the last two years.

Ideally, we’d like to cram as much of this information into our heads as possible. However, barring advances in nanotechnology, we can’t store anywhere near that much.

This is especially true when we absorb information too quickly, as our social media culture encourages us to.

When you read a tweet, scan an article for information or binge a TV show on Netflix, you usually forget the majority of its contents. This is because of a type of memory loss called “the forgetting curve”.

When you read, or watch a TV show, you retain most of the information in the first 24 hours and depending on how much you review it, it starts to decline rapidly.

A recent study by Chartbeat showed that one in three people spend less than 15 seconds reading an article before moving on to something else . Instead of reading articles we now scan them for information and this has changed the way our memory works.

We used to rely on recall memory, where you spontaneously call up information in your mind. We have now switched to recognition memory, a type of memory focused on remembering where information is stored instead of the information itself.

The internet acts as an external memory, one we can access from the phones in our pockets at any time.

According to Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard University, the Ancient Greeks feared writing would make people more stupid, as they would no longer need to rely on their memories.

However, instead of fighting against technological advancements, we should recognise how they change the way we receive information and alter our learning to compliment it.

The first place this change should be introduced is at school, where the exams are graded solely on what a child can remember and regurgitate. This type of schooling forces children to develop their recall memory, preparing them for a world we no longer inhabit.

We should instead be teaching children how to locate facts on the internet and analyse them critically. Give them a test where they have to use the internet to answer questions; if they find the correct answer they have exercised their ability to find important information.

As they get older we can introduce them to reputable sites filled with academic papers and let them use the internet to answer complex questions.

However, we need to be careful, as people are highly receptive to misinformation. The World Economic Forum even cites “massive digital misinformation” as a major geopolitical risk.

Recently YouTube let a conspiracy video make it to the top of their trending tab and since January of this year, Wikipedia’s ‘Moon Landings’ page has been edited over 30 times, with some people claiming the moon itself is fake.

Large numbers of people now believe that the earth is flat, the climate isn’t warming, Paul McCartney was replaced by a doppelganger, the illuminati is a secret organisation in control of the world and vaccinations cause autism.

Measles, a disease which killed two million people a year before a vaccination was created in 1960, has seen a comeback in Europe thanks to anti-vaccination campaigns. Romania had a vaccination rate of 97% ten years ago which has now dropped below 80% due to a 2013 anti-vaccination campaign.

In 2017 Romania had 5,562 cases of measles followed closely by Italy with 5,006 cases. In May 2017 Italy made vaccinations against 12 diseases, including measles, mandatory and it caused huge protests with people shouting “No to mandatory vaccines! Yes to the freedom to choose.”

These are the most obvious examples of the problems of misinformation, yet they are telling of a global society that needs to learn to understand which information they should trust.

David Dunning, a professor of Psychology at The University of Michigan, suggests that the best way to counteract misinformation is to be sceptics of the information we receive.

He cites a study from 2017 which found that groups who designate one or two members to be devil’s advocates made better reasoned decisions than consensus groups.

Dunning also warned against confirmation bias:

“Research shows that considering the opposite — actively asking how a conclusion might be wrong — is a valuable exercise for reducing unwarranted faith in a conclusion.”

Teaching people which websites are reputable and which aren’t could also help with this process.

If there were some way to give a stamp of approval to sites which provide consistent, objectively true facts, then we could save ourselves and our children from the pitfalls of fake news.

Smartphones have given us more access to information than ever before and we need to learn to work with the technology instead of against it.

It’s time to change the education system and change the way we discern fact from fiction.

If we stay stuck in our old ways of learning and thinking we will be left with a pocket full of information, without the tools to properly navigate it.