Taking a Screenshot of Something Won’t Help You Remember It

Screen-shotting may cause people to mentally "check out".

You know that screenshot you took to help you remember something later? It might be damaging your memory.

Researchers at Binghamton University ran a bunch of experiments and found that people were worse at remembering images they screen-shotted compared to images they just looked at. Screen-shotting may cause people to mentally “check out” because they know the information has been saved somewhere else. It’s part of what’s called the “photo-taking impairment effect”…which basically says using your phone disengages you from what you’re doing and that makes it harder to remember later.