Stop thinking of photos as memories

Confessions of a digital photo hoarder

Some nights I lie awake, pondering over the meaning of life. Other nights, I agonize about the state of my camera roll on my iPhone.

I used to hoard a staggering number of digital photos — over 18,000 of them to be more specific. They were well-hidden in my storage cloud.

For the cost of 2.99 USD, barely the price of an iced latte or a slice of an avocado toast. It is a small price to pay to offload my memories onto my phone.

I confessed — I was ruled by the mantra of the Instagram era — ‘Pics or it didn’t happen.’

I mean, how else would my friends know that I have been to the gym if I didn’t upload a selfie on Instagram? What about the sunrise I saw when I woke up at 6 a.m.? I have to put it up online as proof and validation!

Besides the obsession to document every single waking moment of my life that nobody asked for. I was unnerved by the number of duplicates I had. Why did I have 16 photos of the same cup of latte art?

The multiple photos of the same frame stem from the unwarranted fear that the first picture I took will not turn out great. Because of this, my synapses (or lack thereof) fire signals to my brain to “let me play safe and click the shutter a few more times.” After all, it costs nothing… except it causes me to lose my sanity and tear my hair out when I tried to scroll through my pictures from start to end.

I knew I had to hunker down on this problem.

Begrudgingly, I bit the bullet and took an entire weekend to cull through thousands of photos and screenshots.

That weekend, I remembered I had as much fun as eating sand.

While I mercilessly deleted over 50% of my photo album, I know I had to subdue the underlying problem of the need to remember every single moment of my life.

The old me was so afraid to let a slice of my memory slip away through my fingers unless I captured them in photos and put them on my socials for the world to witness. But…

Pictures ≠ Memories

And science has proven it. The “photo-taking impairment effect” goes to show that being preoccupied with taking photos rather than immersing yourself at the moment has to lead to poorer recall of the actual event.

Relying on photos to remember has a similar effect.

Also, sharing personal experiences on social media might impair precisely those memories we are trying to preserve.

Memory is like a muscle. For it to function well, you need to train and exercise it regularly. And it does not entail taking hundreds of photos.

It took me a while to appreciate living in the moment. But once I tune in more to my surroundings, I find myself less likely to pick up my phone. I give myself time to enjoy and savour every sight and sound that surrounds me.

These days, I still take photos but I am much more selective in what I want to capture. I delete any duplicates I have immediately. I don’t bother with pictures of my meals anymore. I don’t expect to have 100 photos from a family gathering. A single group picture at the end will do.

My family and friends are too kind to say this — but shoving a camera in front of everyone’s faces is annoying as hell. Stop that!