Are we losing our minds?

I read the article from Wired Magazine, "Clive Thompson on Human Memory and the Outboard Brain." I feel he is making some claims without looking at the entire scenario. He claims that because of the Internet, we now longer are can remember as much as our elders. Some of his claims are I think have other correlations however that can account for the statistics which came up. Thompson says, "When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so." In our day, the popularity of online calenders and Palm Pilots have eradicated the need to put dates like this to memory. At the touch of a button, we can find out this information. I don't think that it is that we cant remember the facts, I just think that since we don't need to remember it, we don't put the time into trying. Thompson also says that, "And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank." With the way cell phones are made, we no longer have to enter in the actual phone number of who we want to call, often times we have phone books within our cell phones which store the numbers for us. So unlike our elders who had to repetitively enter in phone numbers, we just don't have the repetition practice they did. I'm not saying that we aren't getting lazy, I'm just saying that we should look at the other factors involved before we make claims saying our memory is withering.