This finding mirrors a lot of related work—on both people and animals—that has shown depriving individuals of post-learning rest leads to poorer retention, recall errors, and a failure to learn from past mistakes.
“It seems our daily activities help determine the fate of new memories,” Craig says. “If we’re exposed to new information relatively continuously, without any of these rest periods that used to be a feature of life, that could have a detrimental effect on our ability to lay down and strengthen new memories.”
Apart from all these concerns, memory research has also revealed a “recency bias” that may have consequences for those of us who reach for a device as soon as life gives us a free moment.
According to Brad Pfeiffer, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, some of the processes that help us hold on to new information tend to prioritize whatever we’ve encountered most recently. “So let’s say that whenever you finish studying, you grab your phone and scroll on TikTok,” he says. “If these TikTok videos are the last thing you tend to look at before taking a break, then they may be what your memory replays and retains, rather than your homework or whatever it is you were doing before you picked up your phone.”
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