“The reminiscence bump involves not only the recall of incidents; we even remember more scenes from the films we saw and the books we read in our late teens and early twenties. … The bump can be broken down even further – the big news events that we remember best tend to have happened earlier in the bump, while our most memorable personal experiences are in the second half. … The key to the reminiscence bump is novelty. The reason we remember our youth so well is that it is a period where we have more new experiences than in our thirties or forties. It’s a time for firsts – first sexual relationships, first jobs, first travel without parents, first experience of living away from home, the first time we get much real choice over the way we spend our days. Novelty has such a strong impact on memory that even within the bump we remember more from the start of each new experience.”
(written by Claudia Hammond)

You might think the smartphone camera is a wonderful invention. It lets you capture moments that would otherwise be lost, because it’s always just a few seconds away, in your pocket.

But the smartphone camera is a sinister Life Stealer. It is convenient, so it tempts us to reach for it often.

Because we reach for it often, we interrupt our precious moments more frequently.

We think that when we capture moments with a camera or camcorder, we can keep them safe. We think we can preserve the perfect moment digitally, permanently.

This does take some stress away. It’s okay if we “miss” something, because we can go back and watch the video. It’s okay if it happened too quickly, because we can relive the moment over and over later.

But imagine if you didn’t have this magic memory capturing tool. Imagine that every moment disappears as quickly as it comes. Imagine that you can never take any special moment lightly, because that moment might never come again.

I think that would force you to pay attention.

Because you won’t think that you can “save it for later”. It would demand that you appreciate every moment because the present is all you have.

But we have the smartphone camera. And so we zip through life never fully experiencing anything, thinking that we can put off living in the moment. And that we can cherish and indulge in our memories some day later.

But of course that “some day” might never come, because when you’re always busy archiving memories, when will there be time to enjoy them? You can only do one thing at a time. If you’re too busy capturing the present or reliving the past, you miss out on right now.

And, what if, when you finally get around to appreciating your archived memories, it might be too late? Your kids might have grown up. Or you might be old. Or gone.