HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AND AI ARE RESHAPING ATTENTION, MEMORY AND CREATIVITY AMONG YOUNGER GENERATIONS

Abstract

This Final Degree Project examines how social media and artificial intelligence are reshaping attention, memory, and creativity in younger generations. The study is based on a structured literature review with a comparative and analytical orientation, drawing on academic articles, review studies, meta-analyses, and selected institutional sources. The objective is to identify the main patterns through which digital technologies are influencing cognitive functioning in contexts of everyday use.

The analysis shows that social media and AI affect cognition through different but partially overlapping mechanisms. Social media is associated with constant stimulation, rapid attentional shifts, social feedback, and algorithmic exposure, all of which may contribute to fragmented attention and difficulty sustaining deep focus. AI, by contrast, is more directly linked to cognitive offloading, externalised recall, content generation, and task simplification, which may reduce internal cognitive effort while also affecting originality and independent thinking. In relation to memory, both technologies promote increasing reliance on external systems for storing and retrieving information. In relation to creativity, they expand opportunities for expression and ideation, but also raise concerns about reduced idea diversity and weaker cognitive autonomy.

Overall, the dissertation argues that these technologies are not simply changing the tools younger generations use, but the conditions under which attention, memory, and creativity are exercised.