Multi-screening may mess with your memory

There is a (common) theory which states: Memory isn't like a disk drive. When you remember, the brain doesn't just read something from disk.

Instead, when you remember, the information you're remembering is re-summarized and written back, possibly at higher levels of 'compression'. I put that in scare quotes, but when the brain uses references to other memories to reduce the space taken by any single one, compression is what it is.

The theory here, then, is that distraction at (forgive the computer-esque terms) the exact time it's being recompressed and written back out, can disrupt that process and cause it to not be stored properly.

This checks out. Bringing up a memory, distracting yourself and then just... telling yourself it's unimportant... is, indeed, one way to deliberately forget something you'd rather forget.

Used beneficially, you can forget spoilers for a novel. You could even attempt to forget trauma this way, though I don't believe that's nearly as likely to work.

If you just happen to get distracted for other reasons, though? You might forget something you'd rather not.

This headline is clickbaity, esp for a HN audience. The article clearly states that the problem is consuming multiple media sources simultaneously, which AFAIK is more or less _completely_ unrelated to having more than one screen.

Having more than one screen is something you need _when the one thing you are working on requires too much relevant information for a single screen_. That's the opposite.

The word "screen" here is a poor choice. You could just as easily be "multi-screening" by watching a picture in picture video while reading a web-site. Or the reverse, in their frame of reference, web development where you have one display/ output screen and one code screen is not multi-screening.

Poor word choice because it's not as catchy as saying "Trying to consume two types of media at once" which is what they seem to be pointing to.

A bit on a tangent so forgive my rant, but I'll contribute with a few patterns that come to mind that have something to do with messing up one's memory (but this could be subjective):

1) reinventing of software UIs and moving things around from version to version; sometimes the change is legitimate but that is not the case very frequently. This is similar to shuffling content in textbooks so that students cannot use the previous version of the textbook

2) UI bloat - all options are compressed and displayed on the screen at once, many of the features that may not be addressed to you make it hard for you not to get distracted from what you are doing. Combine that with #1

-3) The opposite of 2 where things are hidden and the interface is very unintuitive. Makes the user feel powerless and insecure

3) Fast technology cycles and too much innovation in too short of an interval. Sometimes that innovation is pure recycling and coupled with hype

4) The decay of the print media together with notetaking with a pen on paper. The endless possibilities that come with using digital notetaking or content consumption come with the explosion of information which we're subjected to. We can store more but we remember less. Search engines contributed to the weak outsourcing of our memory externally. Of course, there are plenty of advantages in the digital realm, i'm only pointing out to a few ways that I feel made my memory much worse over the year. As I said, all these could be subjective and my age (40) as well as my own genetics which can be taken in as a factor. But I noticed that I make less and less effort to memorize things in general

Sounds like you need to merge more often.