Sarah is twenty-eight years old and can't remember where she parked her car. Again. It's not the first time this week. Yesterday she forgot an important appointment, last week her sister's birthday. "I'm becoming like my grandmother," she jokes with friends. But maybe it's not a joke. According to a study by theUniversity of Utah Health published NeurologySarah is part of a worrying statistic: from 2013 to 2023, the number of young adults under 40 with serious memory and concentration problems nearly doubled, from 5,1% to 9,7%. Practically one in ten. And no, it's not normal.
Memory Problems: When a Twenty-Year-Old's Brain Works Like a Seventy-Year-Old's
The researchers asked the same question to as many as 4,5 million people under the age of 40: “Do you have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions due to a physical, mental, or emotional condition?” The results, published in the magazine of theAmerican Academy of Neurology, surprised the authors themselves. “At first I was shocked,” he declared Ka-Ho Wong, neuroimmunology researcher and first author of the study. Reports have nearly doubled in ten years.
Elizabeth Kensinger, professor of psychology at Boston College which studies memory, has a special suspect: multitasking.
“One of the best ways to make a twenty-year-old seem like a seventy-year-old in terms of memory performance is to get that twenty-year-old to multitask.”
The brain can hold it for five seconds, maybe ten. After a few minutes, the content is gone. This isn't a biological problem with the young brain. It's a problem with how we're using it.
Financial stress, smartphones, and sleepless nights
The study identified several risk factors. Adults with household incomes below $35.000 showed higher rates of memory and concentration problemsBut here a vicious circle is triggered: Having cognitive deficits makes it more difficult to find and keep a well-paying job, worsening the economic situation. Health conditions also matter. High blood pressure, previous strokes, and chronic diseases increase the risk. And then there is sleep.
Kensinger has no doubts:
"There are now ten- and eleven-year-olds who stay up late with their phones and spend too much time in front of them. This seriously interferes with the quality of their sleep."
The hippocampus, the part of the brain that is fundamental for memory, is the one most affected by stress hormones. The less sleep you get, the more stress you accumulate, the worse your memory works. A script that repeats itself every night, for years.
The study's authors identify among the main causes "economic stress, uncertainties in the labor market, changes in work environments, and increased dependence on digital tools."
76% of workers experience at least one work-related disorder: Fatigue, loss of energy, sleep disturbances, stress, and anxiety. Young people report similar rates of discomfort to older people.
Young people and memory problems: what about Italy? Data is lacking, but the signs are there.
In Italy there are no studies comparable to the American one. There are no national statistics dedicated to memory problems in people under 40. The data of theIstituto Superiore di Sanita They mainly concern those over 65: approximately 900.000 Italians with mild cognitive impairment and one million with dementia. But we're talking about seniors, not twenty-year-olds who forget where they parked.
What we do know, however, is that over 700.000 young Italians suffer from mental distress, with 49,4% of young people between 18 and 25 reporting having suffered from anxiety and depression even after the pandemic. And specialized Italian centers report "an increasingly frequent condition" of young people with subjective cognitive disorders linked precisely to anxiety and depression. These are not official figures on memory problems, but the picture is consistent.
Memory can be trained, but it requires discipline.
The good news is that this is not an irreversible biological change. Recent studies on brain plasticity They show that the brain creates multiple copies of every memory, each with different characteristics. "Early" neurons consolidate long-term memory, while "late" neurons make it immediately accessible. The system works, but it needs to be powered properly.
Kensinger suggests some concrete strategies: give information enough attention, get enough sleep, manage chronic stress, eat well. Nothing new, it's all been heard before. But the hard part is execution. Turn off your phone. Close tabs. Do one thing at a time. It seems trivial, but for a generation that grew up with a smartphone in hand, it's like asking them to unlearn how to breathe.
Wong, the study's author, is clear: "If people report these problems, we need to address them." The first step would be to collect data in Italy, too, to understand how widespread the phenomenon is here. The second step is more complicated: to convince millions of young adults that, no, it's not normal to forget everything at twenty-eight. And that perhaps it's worth slowing down, before the brain really starts to slow down.
Because one thing's for sure: Sarah's parents memorized at least ten phone numbers. Sarah struggles to remember hers, too.
And it's not genetics' fault.
