Can't you remember a person's name? You are not alone

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Attach value and context to names to keep the summary of their (iStock) with smartphones on our fingers, we are increasingly relying on technology to remember things for us – even people’s names Kartik Parija is proud of his elephant memory, but lately names have slip away. “I had moments when I made contact with someone from the pre-Internet days, remember our shared history, but a moment empty by their name,” says the 49-year-old entrepreneur of Bengaluru. He remembers uncomfortably to send such conversations without mentioning the person, while his mind detects the “fundamental piece of personal connection”. This decay has only emerged over the past three years, he says. “It feels very strange, like the fuzzy confusion after pulling an alter in front of an exam.” Don’t get it to age. The screenwriter Shoaib Zulfi Nazeer has noticed it since the middle of the 20s. “Back at school and college were all a peer group, and you heard names so often that it was easy to remember it. After moving to Mumbai in 2018 and starting people online for networks, I realized that I struggled to remember names,” says the 32-year-old Roorkee. Nazeer has co-written dialogues for films such as Three of US (2022) and Superboys of Malegaon (2024). The general thread in their experience of forgetting names is the influx of digital communication. Both describe how the flooding of information paid so much attention that, even after regular, sometimes deep, conversations with people, they find it difficult to fully register or retain the primary detail about a person: their name. As communication from orally moves to textual in the digital era, we interact with many more people at the same time. But the clues have changed: Instead of calling a name out loud, we open chatboxes after seeing someone’s content in a feed, use a few letters in the letters in a message app in a message, or scroll to their chat in the inbox and ping it directly. The act of saying a name or repeating spiritually has reduced, perhaps explaining why names of memory slipping from memory. Also read: Defining Ghaywan on ‘Homebound’: ‘If I don’t tell my stories, who will do it?’ Mumbai neurologist Siddharth Warrier explains how a name heard, visually (linked to a person’s face) and wearing emotional clues, each in different parts of the brain mounted and woven together during recall. “The more sensory hooks you attach to a name, the stronger your ability to remember it,” he says. Digital communication creates a kind of ‘sensory blindfold’, Worrier explains, and often reduces people to flat, two -dimensional entities and deprives the brain of the multisensory inputs needed to anchor a name in long -term memory. Digital communication has led to a kind of cognitive download, or a shift of information and mental effort to a source outside the brain. Just as we stop memorizing phone numbers as soon as our phones start storing them, we are now relying on devices to remember names. Lounge spoke to a dozen people about age groups and professions, and each allowed them to browse through old chats or mutual groups to look for someone because they couldn’t remember their name. This dependence on digital memory is often shaky, as names on social media and messaging platforms are frequent pseudonym – therefore you tend to see people’s social media handles instead of their real names, or the names are initialized, and display photos are kept empty for privacy. Pune-based communications coach June George Varghese, 44, finds her fast when she couldn’t remember anyone’s name and browse through a WhatsApp group list for clues, but eventually found two similar contacts. “They had similar first names, nor did I remember their surnames. With no profile pictures, I couldn’t confirm which of them was my person. ‘ MV Radhakrishna, a 48-year-old cloud computer professor from Hyderabad, is reminiscent of a friend who called him to help identify a former classmate who responded to his post in their WhatsApp group. “The profile showed only the initials of this person instead of the full name, and my friend could recognize our friend from the display photo, but still not put their name,” he says. It is possible for you to struggle with the reminder of the names of people with whom you have perished in the past, Warrier says. ‘The neural away from our brain’s recall network is rusted. But once you oil it, kick it back into gear. ‘ The more tense you are, the harder it is for the brain to keep and remember things, he says, because the tension redirects the brain elsewhere. Recycling of memory in the digital era focused from person to content driven, says Shaheena Attarwala, a product design manager in Bengaluru. ‘People reach out to LinkedIn, and I regularly forget their names or the companies they come from. But I will remember the theme of our conversation and eventually look for keywords from the chat, ‘said the 38-year-old. These are constant conversations where she has an incentive to remember the names: like someone who invited her to a foreign counterpart. She was actively talking to these people and struggling to remember their names. This reflects a broader shift in how we are closely involved: the person has become a means to an end, while the content is the end. In a world where the content dominance of the screen space, especially in short-video formats, names, which are often reduced to user names or handles, are driven to the margins and metaphorically to the margins. On Instagram roles, even the identity of a user is minimized. Their handle, not even their real name, appears in small text hidden in the bottom left corner of the screen. This is the ‘typing of conversations’, says Attarwala, where the story is more important than who tells it. “I do look at the names of people who put on me before I like or comment on it, but a few minutes later I often can’t remember who it was,” Raksh P. Jain, 21, a visual designer and software developer of Delhi. “Social media and digital relationships have made people think that other people, so, are disposable. It is easier than ever to forget people, because digital communication reduces a person to their contribution,” he says. Yet digital communication, for all its defects, can offer unexpected benefits when it comes to memory retention. “On WhatsApp, for example, the person’s name is constantly visible at the top of the chat, which helps to strengthen it passively,” says neurologist Warrier. “In contrast, a name can only be mentioned once, at the beginning, and never again, which can make it harder to retain. “Anand Damani, behavioral scientist in Mumbai, points out that name re -call during the first time face -to -face meetings can be particularly difficult.” Your brain is taking so many clues – I like this person? Can I trust them? – That the name often does not register, “he explains. someone asks their name, but instead of hearing their answer, I already think of the next question to ask them. ‘ It is not out of rudeness, he makes it clear. Radhakrishna has created an Open Source People Tracker tool where he saves notes on a person directly on a Google plate. It is now names, directions or phone numbers, neurological benefits. And to remember names, especially helps to strengthen our social memory, making it easier to maintain and navigate relationships, “he adds. Why do parents and grandparents often mix the names of their children and grandchildren?” This happens because of adjoining memory recycling, “he says.” be stored. ‘ Perhaps it is not always overstimulation or indifference that leads to a name of someone’s mind. to recognize a person. In the endless scroll of faces and handles, where identities are often reduced to metadata, it is perhaps the most human thing we can do to remember someone’s name. #features read next story