We’ve outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they’re failing us.

Foer argues that ubiquitous digital “external memory” (phones, search engines, calendars, photo archives) changes not only what we remember but how we feel about remembering. When we rely on devices to store names, dates, and experiences, ordinary lapses—misplacing a detail, forgetting an appointment—start to look like proof of cognitive decline rather than a normal feature of human memory. The quote highlights a psychological feedback loop: offloading memory reduces practice and confidence, which increases anxiety about forgetting, which in turn makes memory feel less reliable. It also implies a cultural shift from remembering as an active skill to remembering as a retrieval problem delegated to technology.