I only noticed this after scrolling my phone and realizing I knew the picture more than the afternoon it captured. When you rely on a photo as proof, your brain skips the deep encoding that makes a memory feel alive. Try not taking one thing this month and see which experience you actually remember more vividly.
Or, you just wind up having no memory, and nothing to jog your memory, cause straight up, the human brain is not capable of holding onto it all. There is certainly something to be said for living in the moment, but to condemn picture taking entirely is dumb.
The brain is incredibly malleable and, for a lot of people, memory is a vague image or a concept of something which happened. For a smaller subset, visual memory and visual imagination is not possible. Pictures are a more permanent visual representation, which can be additive to an experience. That’s not to say you shouldn’t live in the moment or that you should take pictures in lieu of making memories. You do you. I’m biased because I’m a photographer though.
I’m all for reducing your phone usage and “living in the moment” but taking photos is actually something I try to do more recently, not less. Obviously, I’m not watching events through the phone screen while filming them, but if something worth remembering happens I will quickly snap a picture first (double press the power button, single press the volume button, done), and then put the phone away and enjoy it.
I realized that going through old photos actually brings me a lot of joy and often reminds me of moments I had completely forgotten. And mind you, I’m only approaching 30, I can only imagine this will be even more important when I’m older.
So yeah, I disagree with this one, but of course I realize this will be different for different people.
How many events did you also forget, but don’t have any reason to even think of it again?
