Equipped with digital cameras, smartphones and tablets, it’s easier than ever to photograph, film or otherwise record and capture memorable and chance moments of our children’s, as well as our own, lives. That said, market research conducted in May by Harris Poll for Keepy indicates that “technology has made our memories significantly harder to access and save for the future.”
The study revealed that 75 percent of 250 parents of children under age 10 who share photos and video with family and friends save them in multiple locations. Over half (52 percent) said they haven’t done anything to preserve all the children’s photos and video they have for the future. Forty-four percent said they have trouble finding photos and videos because they just can’t remember where they were saved.
Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) said they haven’t really thought about how they will share family photos and video with their children when they are older.
Commenting on the survey results, digital life expert David Ryan Polgar stated, “Between smartphones, DSLRs, and iPads, most parents today have multiple devices with which to capture family memories. We are seeing a dramatic increase in the volume of photos and videos families are capturing, but unfortunately content is often captured quickly and then forgotten or lost.
“Ironically, the most photographed generation of children may have the fewest photos and videos to look back at if parents do not save and preserve their memories in a lasting way.”
Digital Photo Storage Habits
Among the report’s highlights:
- A majority of parents of children under age 10 who share photos/videos with family and friends have their photos/videos stored in three or more places;
- 75% of these parents save their children’s photos or videos in various places, and this number is even higher (86%) for these parents with children ages 3-5;
- 56% of these parents have their children’s photos/videos saved in 3 or more places while 20% have them saved in 5 or more places;
- 92% of these parents save photos/video online, including 57% who save material on a computer hard drive, 53% on social media, 30% on an external hard drive, 26% on a photo sharing site and 24% in cloud-based storage;
- The majority (51%) of these parents say they wish they took the time to write down information about each photo/video so they would remember the moment more;
- 41% of these parents say they remember what happened in family photos/videos by posting about it on social media, which is great for now but may make it harder to preserve and access in the future.
According to the report, “technology is a blessing and a curse for family memories:”
- 62% of these parents say technology makes it easier to take photos but harder to access them in the future because they are saved in so many places. (To get a sense of how overwhelming our photo-taking has become, Yahoo! estimates that more than 880 billion photos will be taken in 2014.)
- More than half (52%) of these parents say they have tons of photos/videos of their children, but haven’t done anything with them to keep them for the future;
- The thought of organizing all their photos/videos overwhelms half (50%) of these parents.
Keepy and Harris Poll also found that:
- Nearly half (47%) of these parents have not really thought about how they will share the photos/videos they have of their children with them when they are older;
- A surprising percentage of these parents (33%) are actually worried their children will not be able to see any photos or videos from their childhood because they are saved in so many different places.
“The inability to effectively curate the photos and the videos and turn them into memories, accessible in one central location may prevent children from reliving the story of their life in the future—the very reason that parents presumably took photos and videos in the first place,” Keepy notes.
“Parents are understandably concerned and struggling with how to save the stories of their children’s lives in our increasingly digital and mobile world,” Keepy founder and CEO Offir Gutelzon was quoted in the press release.
“As a company focused on creating a new way for families to save and share their memories – this survey really hit home for us how important memory preservation is and how great the need is among families for a solution that helps them not just save files but turn those photos and videos into real memories.”
Image courtesy of flickr user Louise Ireland.
