How photo overload might be warping our ability to remember

When Lavania Oluban looks at photos from her childhood, the memories feel incomplete. “It’s hazy around the edges—I’m filling in missing pieces of the puzzle with a memory that’s not quite real,” she says.

Oluban, 37, has only a handful of birthday photos from when she was young. But her seven-year-old-son, Arlo, has “easily 200,” captured by different attendees on their smartphones. “Practically every single second of his life is documented,” she says. “Arlo’s almost got a virtual reality representation of an event because there are so many pictures and videos. I think for him, it’s quite vivid.”

In 2023, people around the world took an estimated 5.3 billion photos, about 61,400 every second, according to photography data site Photutorial. Oluban alone has more than 140,000 pictures on her phone: selfies with Arlo, sunsets, butterflies, ice cream. They’re instantly accessible, searchable, and sharable.

“People record much more data about their lives than any previous generation,” says Fabian Hutmacher, a psychologist at the University of Würzburg who studies how digital media shapes our memories. “It’s natural to ask: does that change anything about the way we remember our lives?”

How digital photos are reshaping our memories

Autobiographical memory—our recollection of personal life events—is central to how we understand ourselves. “Memories are crucial for defining who we are,” says Hutmacher. “They are a sort of reservoir that we refer to whenever we think about our lives.”

Memory, however, isn’t like playing back a video. Neuroscientific research shows that this type of memory depends on interactions between the hippocampus, which helps consolidate new experiences, and the prefrontal cortex, which organizes them into coherent life narratives. These systems are especially sensitive to attention and emotional engagement—factors that may be disrupted when we’re more focused on photographing a moment than experiencing it.

“Our memory is not faithful,” says Julia Soares, assistant professor of psychology at Mississippi State University. “It’s tied up with who you are and your story making throughout your life. It’s your autobiography.”

Photos can support this reconstructive storytelling. Researchers agree that images often help jog memory by surfacing details or emotions we might otherwise forget. “I take them partly to document, but also as a way of holding onto moments I know I’ll want to revisit,” says 20-year-old Alina Nguyen. “It’s like a time capsule—sometimes I remember specific feelings or details I’d completely forgotten until I see an image…I think I’ve learned a lot about myself just by noticing patterns or changes in the photos over time.”

For Hutmacher, though, photos are more than just a cue for memories. He argues that in the digital age, photos are actually changing how we form memories in the first place. Remembering, he says, is no longer purely internal; it’s an interaction between our minds and resources like photos, meaning it’s built not only from what we store in our brains but also from what we offload onto devices like smartphones.

While offloading can reduce cognitive burden, studies suggest it may also weaken our ability to recall details unless we actively review the material later. As a result, when we turn to digital images to reconstruct an event, those files don’t just support our memory—they become part of it.

This shift raises new questions. If our memories are partly constructed through what we photograph—and what we choose to revisit—then our devices aren’t just reflecting our past. They’re shaping which moments we remember, how vividly, and supposedly how well we interpret our personal histories.

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When too many photos backfire

Still, more pictures don’t necessarily mean stronger memories. A 2013 study by cognitive psychologist Linda Henkel found that photographing objects can actually impair memory, with participants appearing to “rely on the external device of the camera to ‘remember’ for them.” However, when participants engaged with the objects they photographed, they remembered them better. “If you go to a concert and you spend 90 minutes filming, focusing on getting a good angle, then it reduces your enjoyment of the situation, as well as the memory you have of it,” says Hutmacher. “On the other hand, if you record a snapshot because it’s your favourite song, then it can improve memory later.”

Even so, most people don’t regularly revisit their photos. And without reviewing or organizing them, pictures can become overwhelming, making it harder to find the meaningful ones. “It can be a rose with a thorn,” says Soares. “Photos provide these incredible memory cues. But if you never review them, you’re not capitalizing on that benefit, and you may actually be losing something from the act of taking the photo.”

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Parenting expert Kirsty Ketley understands that trade-off. With thousands of images stored on her phone—and backed up to the cloud—she began to feel burdened by her digital archive. “It does become very overwhelming,” she says. When she was alerted that her storage was running out, she decided to take fewer photographs, focusing on special occasions and events. “Parents just [take photos] without thinking,” she says. “I feel I can enjoy the time more because I’m not so worried about whether I’ve got the positioning right. I’m there in the moment…It does help to keep those memories alive.”

Curating what we remember—and what we forget

Psychologists have long recognized that forgetting is an essential part of how memory works. But in a world saturated with digital images, what we choose to capture—and what we choose to revisit or erase—may be subtly reshaping that process, says Soares.

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Our photo habits are no longer just about preserving memories; they’re part of how we construct them in the first place.  For example, when we share photos on social media, evidence shows that we remember the experiences better. Conversely, in her 2023 study, Soares found that deleting photos meant that people remembered their experiences less vividly. Some participants had intentionally deleted photos they wanted to forget, like an ex or a bad night out.

“People are trying to curate their photos to do the type of remembering that they want do,” says Soares. “These photographed events might create hills, and there may be valleys where non-photographed stories or life events may be. It remains to be seen the extent to which that will be the case.”

For Nguyen, the fear of forgetting is enough to keep every photo.  “I do worry about forgetting things that weren’t photographed,” says Nguyen, who has 33,000 photos on her phone. “I think that’s why I’m so drawn to taking photos—to make sure some piece of it stays with me. Forgetting can be scary, especially when it comes to people or moments that shaped me.”

This article is part of Your Memory, Rewired, a National Geographic exploration into the fuzzy, fascinating frontiers of memory science—including advice on how to make your own memory more powerful. Learn more.