How have smartphones affected our historical memory of the past 10 years?

I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking that smartphones simply documented what would have happened anyway. They've radically changed what we remember and how we remember it. By now we have photos of everything, but paradoxically memory doesn't work that way - when you know you've recorded a moment on your phone, your brain doesn't memorize it as well. It's like delegating memory to the device, and then maybe you lose the file or simply never look at it again.

What actually happened is that contemporary history became much more visual and instant, but also fragmented. We remember the last 10 years through screenshots, TikTok, memes, badly shot clips with the wrong angle. We discovered massive events on our smartphones before we heard about them in the newspapers. What do we actually remember well? Often what went viral, not necessarily what was important.

Another thing is that our smartphones created a selective and somewhat distorted memory for us. All the pleasant memories end up on Instagram, the bad ones stay in a drawer. So when we look back at the last 10 years through our devices, we see a polished version of reality. It's a collective memory built in pieces, always online, always available - but it lacks depth and context.