Sharing Personal Memories on Ephemeral Social Media Facilitates Autobiographical Memory
Abstract
The mnemonic effect of posting personal experiences on ephemeral social media was examined. Participants completed a daily diary for 6 consecutive days. On alternate days they were instructed to use, or refrain from using, the ephemeral social media platform Snapchat. At the end of the week, participants received a surprise memory test for the contents of the diaries. We observed significantly superior recall for memories encoded on the Snapchat days, demonstrating memory facilitation despite memory type equivalency across the posting and no posting conditions. The study is the first to examine the effect of Snapchat use on autobiographical memory, with the findings supporting previous work showing that posting on social media facilitates memory. Given the ephemerality of Snapchat posts, the reported improvement in memory contradicts the notion that cognitive offloading occurs automatically when posting memories online.
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The fact that information shared online tends to be curated more carefully, which includes reflecting about an event's meaning and key components, leads to a better internal memory for these events compared to information that is not shared.
“Second, the fact that the information shared online tends to be curated more carefully, which also includes reflecting about an event's meaning as well as its key components, leads to a better internal memory for these events compared to information that is not shared (Johnson & Morley, 2021;Wang et al., 2017; see also Stone & Wang, 2019).”
From Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model (2024) · cites this paper as Johnson & Morley, 2021
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Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1207745 · Cited by 1,762 · cited 13× · see citing works
“If, however, the Google Effect can be found for information initially encoded offline and then subsequently posted online, it suggests that encoded information can be forgotten based on the subsequent knowledge of external storage.”
InfluentialChua, T. H. H., & Chang, L. (2016) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.011 · Cited by 704 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Given the importance of social media in projecting self-identity, 8–10 deliberate management of the content posted online might result in deeper encoding of the material as time and cognitive resources are employed in curating the post.”
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Research works printed but not linked: 3
- [1]1. Henkel LA. Point-and-shoot memories: the influence of taking photos on memory for a museum tour. Psychol Sci 2014; 25: 396-402. doi:10.1177/0956797613504438 · DOI · Paper page
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- [3]3. Soares JS, Storm BC. Forget in a flash: a further investigation of the photo-takingimpairment effect. J Appl Res Mem Cogn 2018; 7: 154-160. doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.10.004 1 <!-- image --> - Figure 1(a-d) . Violin-plots demonstrating (a) the total number of diary entries, (b) the 2 number of correctly recalled diary entries on Day 7, (c) the total number of words used on the 3 diary entries, and (d) the number of words used when recalling the diary entries on Day 7, for 4 the Snapchat (post) and no post days. Median and interquartile range are shown in the 5 boxplots. Figures were produced in R (R Core team 16 ) using the GGplot2 package 6 (Wickham 17 ). 7 8 · DOI
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Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model
Hutmacher, F., Appel, M., & Schwan, S. (2024) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1080/1047840x.2024.2384125 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Johnson, A. J., & Morley, E. G.
- Affiliations
- Bournemouth University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Johnson, Andrew J.
- ORCID
- Johnson, Andrew J.
- Venue
- Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2021-11-01
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 745-749
- ISSN
- 2152-2715 (ISSN-L)
- 2152-2723
- OpenAlex
- W3158929957
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 1.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Bournemouth University Research Online (Bournemouth University) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Keywords
- autobiographical memory, Snapchat, memory retrieval, cognitive offloading, social media use, memory encoding
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Mental Recall, Social Media, Memory, Episodic
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