We live in an era where information has never been more accessible—yet paradoxically, never more fleeting. With a few taps on a smartphone, we can summon the complete works of Shakespeare, the periodic table, tutorials on quantum physics, or a step-by-step guide to making perfect sourdough bread. But how much of what we consume do we actually retain? The age of scrolling has ushered in what many are calling the age of forgetting. Attention spans are shrinking, digital distractions are growing, and our relationship with knowledge is becoming more transactional than transformational. LaShonda Herndon has often spoken about the need to recalibrate how we engage with content, highlighting a broader concern: can education maintain its value when everything is disposable?
The Illusion of Learning Through Access
We’ve come to equate access to information with actual learning. The logic is seductive: if knowledge is always available, why bother memorizing or internalizing it? But education is not merely the act of acquiring facts—it’s the process of synthesizing, applying, and transforming those facts into usable understanding.
Google has become a prosthetic memory device, and while that may increase efficiency, it often discourages deep cognitive engagement. When answers are a search away, the process of wrestling with ideas, questioning, reflecting, and truly understanding is short-circuited. We skim rather than study. We swipe rather than sit with ideas. And in doing so, we risk mistaking familiarity for mastery.
Access alone does not breed competence. The effort involved in retaining, practicing, and building on information is what transforms passive exposure into actionable knowledge. Without the friction of effort, learning becomes ephemeral.
Cognitive Overload and the Brain’s Limits
Human brains are not wired to absorb infinite streams of disconnected information. Cognitive overload—the condition where the volume of data overwhelms our ability to process it—is now a common phenomenon. The dopamine-driven feedback loops of social media exacerbate this, rewarding speed and novelty over depth and reflection.
The shift from linear consumption (books, long lectures, in-depth conversations) to fragmented consumption (tweets, reels, endless feeds) disrupts how we form long-term memories. We retain what we reflect on and revisit, not what we scroll past during a 30-second distraction between meetings.
This has serious implications for education. If learners are constantly overloaded and under-engaged, the learning process becomes shallow. Surface-level familiarity replaces deep comprehension. The challenge becomes not just what we learn, but how we manage to learn it in an ecosystem that resists focus.
Multitasking adds another layer to this complexity. Studies show that people who multitask during learning sessions retain less and make more mistakes. Constantly switching contexts dilutes focus and hampers retention. It turns learning into a fragmented, incoherent process.
The Decline of Internalization
Traditional learning emphasized the importance of internalizing knowledge. Memorization had its place not as an end in itself, but as a scaffold for critical thinking. Students were expected to know historical dates, mathematical formulas, and literary references because this knowledge formed a mental foundation. With that foundation in place, more complex reasoning could take shape.
Today, internalization is often dismissed as outdated. Why memorize when we can Google it? The answer lies in the fact that creative, innovative, and critical thinking often depend on ready access to internal knowledge. The act of drawing connections between ideas—of synthesizing across domains—requires those ideas to be present in the mind, not floating in the cloud.
A surgeon doesn’t stop mid-operation to consult a search engine. A jazz musician improvising on stage isn’t Googling chord progressions. Their expertise is embodied. Education, to be meaningful, must cultivate that same embodied knowledge.
Long-term memory is foundational for comprehension. Concepts must be recalled effortlessly for deeper insights to emerge. Otherwise, learners remain stuck at the surface, unable to engage critically or creatively with what they think they know.
Fast Knowledge vs. Deep Understanding
In the scroll age, there is a premium placed on speed. Learners want quick answers, digestible summaries, and streamlined paths to competence. While there is nothing inherently wrong with efficient learning tools, the danger lies in reducing complex subjects to bite-sized content that removes context, nuance, and contradiction.
Real learning is slow. It involves discomfort. It demands repetition, struggle, and a tolerance for ambiguity. The current educational climate, shaped by digital consumption habits, encourages impatience. If a concept isn’t immediately grasped, it’s abandoned. If an idea challenges preconceptions, it’s swiped away in favor of something more agreeable.
This creates a culture where learners mistake speed for intelligence and convenience for insight. The result? A generation equipped with vast informational exposure but limited depth of understanding.
Deep learning requires engagement with difficult texts, sustained argument, and reflection. It thrives on depth, not breadth. Yet algorithms and trends incentivize the opposite, nudging learners toward content optimized for clicks, not clarity.
Rediscovering the Role of Curiosity
Curiosity is the engine of genuine learning. It invites us to explore not for utility, but for wonder. In the age of forgetting, however, curiosity has become commodified. Algorithms decide what we should be interested in. Content is curated for virality, not value. The learner becomes passive, waiting to be stimulated, rather than actively pursuing knowledge.
To reclaim education, we must reconnect with the practice of following curiosity to its natural depths. This means reading slowly, asking questions that don’t have immediate answers, and embracing the uncertainty of intellectual exploration. It means prioritizing personal meaning over performative knowledge.
Curiosity requires space to flourish. That space is often crowded out by notifications, alerts, and the incessant hum of digital input. Educational systems must learn to carve out silence and focus as foundational conditions for learning—not as luxuries, but as necessities.
Schools and educators can promote curiosity by fostering open-ended inquiry, project-based exploration, and student-led learning. Giving learners ownership over their questions can reignite a desire to go deep, rather than skim the surface.
Teaching for Retention, Not Just Exposure
The future of education must focus on teaching for retention and application, not mere exposure. This means designing curricula that encourage revisiting, recontextualizing, and reapplying ideas over time. Spaced repetition, reflective writing, project-based learning, and Socratic dialogue are all methods that reinforce deeper engagement.
Educators must be aware of the digital habits their students bring into the classroom. Instead of competing with these habits, they can work with them—by helping students develop critical digital literacy, distinguish between shallow and meaningful content, and use technology to augment rather than replace mental effort.
Moreover, the emphasis should shift from content delivery to skill development. Critical thinking, media literacy, metacognition, and information synthesis are the survival skills of the scroll era. When students are equipped to process and prioritize information, the chaos of the digital world becomes navigable.
It is also crucial to teach learners how to build durable habits around concentration and intellectual stamina. These habits must be cultivated with intention, as they are in direct opposition to the convenience culture of scrolling.
Reimagining Memory in the Digital Age
It would be a mistake to romanticize the past or demonize technology. The goal is not to eliminate digital tools but to develop a new relationship with them. This involves understanding the limits of our memory and the strengths of our devices—and building bridges between the two.
Rather than using devices to replace memory, we should use them to support it. Digital notebooks, mind-mapping apps, personalized learning systems, and thoughtful information management can help learners retain what matters. The key is intentionality. Passive consumption must give way to active curation.
Memory should not be thought of as a repository of trivia but as the architecture of thought. The more structured and interconnected our memories, the more we can reason, create, and problem-solve. Education must aim to cultivate these mental structures, even in a world that tempts us to forget.
The challenge is not only technical but philosophical. We must ask: What knowledge is worth keeping close? What ideas are worth wrestling with? What skills must be embodied, not just accessed? These are questions every modern learner must grapple with.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Depth in a Shallow Age
The age of forgetting is not an inevitability; it is a consequence of choices—both personal and systemic. If we want to preserve the essence of education as a transformative journey, we must resist the gravitational pull of convenience and immediacy.
We must remember that knowledge is not just what we consume, but what we internalize, question, and apply. True learning is measured not in the volume of content accessed, but in the quality of thought developed.
In a world where everything is a scroll away, the real challenge is not finding information but cultivating wisdom. That is the task before educators, learners, and institutions alike: to ensure that in the abundance of content, we do not lose the art of learning itself.
To embrace this challenge is to take a stand for education that matters—not for speed or performance, but for meaning and depth. That stand begins with each individual who chooses to learn deeply rather than broadly, who lingers over ideas, and who resists the temptation to swipe away complexity in favor of simplicity.