Welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman.

Whether you're sitting at your computer or listening via an app on your phone,

the fact that you're hearing this podcast means it's safe to assume the internet has had an impact on your daily life.

With smartphone ownership predicted to hit 2.5 billion in the next three years, and 60% of

internet traffic coming through mobile devices, the world is becoming more reliant on gadgets

to guide us through processes we might historically have done from memory. In her coverpiece

this week, Lara Prendergast claims that we are outsourcing our brains to the internet. But what is the real impact

of technology on our memories? And is over-reliance on tech, really such a bad thing? I'm joined now by

Charlotte G, editor of Tech World, Professor Martin Conway, head of psychology at City University,

and Lara Prendergast, our online editor. So, Lara, you're the online editor

of the spectator, but you're seeing quite downbeat about the effect that technology is having

on your brain in this piece. Yeah, I mean, I love my job and I obviously wouldn't

about to do it without the internet and my phone, but I do think that it's having an effect on me. And certainly people I've

spoken to have had said similar things to me that they think it's affecting their ability

to remember things. And also the way that they process information. Because we're processing

so much information, we're not actually necessarily committing it to memory, which when I was younger

I used to have quite a good memory. And I do feel I've got a smartphone probably in 2011,

straight after I left university, and I do feel like it's changing the way I think about things.

Whether that's necessarily a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate. But personally, I feel like it's changed the way I've learned things.

Martin Conway, have you observed this change in the way people think, in the way people use

their memories?

Well, I'm dubious about it.

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