Is our reliance on our smartphones helping us do more, or are we all really suffering from “digital amnesia”? The jury is out on the exact effects that using our smartphones for (pretty much all of) our daily tasks has on our brains, its ability to retain information, and keep track of everything we try to stash in our heads, the Guardian writes, citing neuroscientists and researchers. On the one hand, some argue that some smartphone functions that help us remember static data — such as phone numbers, appointments, etc — makes more “space” available in our brains to use for other cognitive functions. However, others argue that the slope is far more slippery, saying that the less we rely on our brains, the less sharp they become, and that outsourcing certain brain functions is actually altering the physical composition of what is arguably our most important organ.

“Downloading” our thoughts outside of our brains isn’t anything new. It’s just that it’s become a more digitized process over the years. Prior to the advent of the technology that brought us smartphones and computers, humans typically jotted down their thoughts and reminders — whether grocery shopping lists, doctor appointments, or reminders to call someone back — using pen and paper, notes neuroscientist Chris Bird. This process of “downloading” things from our brains to an “external drive” therefore isn’t new and actually could, he argues, help make more brain power and space available to allocate to other functions, such as concentration and creativity.

But there are also dangers to this approach: Other neuroscientists, such as McGill University professor Oliver Hardt, back the “use it or lose it” argument. “Once you stop using your memory it will get worse, which makes you use your device even more,” he tells the Guardian. A 2005 University of Waterloo study supports this hypothesis: Researchers found that an excessive reliance on our smartphones for convenient information retrieval is connected to “lazy thinking,” suggesting that there is actually a connection between “heavy smartphone use and lowered intelligence,” although there is no clear causal relationship established as of yet.

Some smartphone functions are undermining our brains more than others: While just using convenient functions on our phones to remember things like a recipe ingredient list or where we parked our car in the mall garage may not necessarily be a major detriment to our memory ability, evidence is beginning to emerge that an over-reliance can begin to alter the physical structure of our brains. This effect is more likely to result from relying on our phones to carry out more complex functions, such as geographical mapping (read: using Google Maps all the time). Although relying on GPS to guide you to a completely new destination isn’t the end of the world for your brain’s gray matter, it is far healthier to engage in spatial behavior in geographical mapping. For example, understanding a map to be able to compute directions and decipher where certain points are requires spatial cognition that requires the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a critical role in our memory abilities.

What does this all mean? Aside from the day-to-day nuances of forgetting a task on your to-do list, neuroscientists are growing more concerned that our over-reliance on smartphones is actually going to give rise to more degenerative brain diseases. An ongoing study on adolescent brain cognitive development has indicated that young children with greater exposure to tech (such as smartphones and tablets) showed more cortical thinning — a process that is supposed to happen with age as part of the natural process of atrophy. Cortical thinning is connected to degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia.