When you think about it, it’s almost disturbing how much time we spend sharing cutesy pictures and clickbait articles to friends on social media. That being said, we all do it. But when we get so excited about something that our immediate instinct is to share it to all of our online friends, how often are we really reading what we’re sharing? And how much does the decision to share impact our ability to effectively digest and understand the content?
Well, it turns out the act of sharing online content may have a very real, and slightly disturbing, impact on our cognitive function. According to a research study completed by Beijing University and Cornell University, sharing information online actually creates “cognitive overload,” which negatively impacts the ability to learn and remember, EurekAlert! reports.
Not only is there a direct correlation between the act of sharing something on social media and memory retention of the shared content, but the mere act of sharing can actually impact performances on tasks after the fact.
"Most people don't post original ideas any more. You just share what you read with your friends," Qi Wang, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University said to EurekAlert!. "But they don't realize that sharing has a downside. It may interfere with other things we do."
Along with a team of peers, Wang recently conducted a series of experiments at Beijing University. They tested a group of Chinese college students at the university to test their hypothesis that reposting impacts learning and memory – both online and in the real world.
During the experiment, the students were separated into two groups and given a series of messages from Weibo. After being instructed to read the first message, group one was given the option to either repost it or to move on and read the next message. Group two was only given the option to move on to the next message.
Both groups were then asked to complete an online test on the content of the messages. Group one (the reposting group) gave nearly twice as many incorrect answers as group two, showing that they generally had a poorer comprehension of the messages.
The researchers deduced that making the decision to share or not takes up too many cognitive resources, which could impact subsequent performances on anything from reading a book to taking a test.
In a second experiment, students were asked to view another series of Weibo messages and were then given a test on how well they could comprehend a scientific article. Once again the reposting group performed significantly worse than the other group.
"The sharing leads to cognitive overload, and that interferes with the subsequent task," Wang said. "In real life when students are surfing online and exchanging information and right after that they go to take a test, they may perform worse."
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