What is Doodling? A phrase that’s been heard many times before, but no one looks into it.

Doodling has been known as a “habit” that many people start to develop without entirely realizing it.  This specific habit is identified by either scribbling or sketching on classwork, pieces of paper, or even on your own hands if boredom gets the best of you.  

Many people find doodling to be distracting or a “bad habit”, However that is the opposite of the truth. Doodling is a helpful technique to stimulate the brain, help creativity, reduce stress, and even improve memory.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, “Surprisingly, when both groups were asked to recall details from the call, those that doodled were better at paying attention to the message and reciting the details.” This information is given by an experiment where psychologist, Jackie Andrade, had asked 40 people to monitor a call. Half of the group had doodled while listening and the other half did not, which resulted in the half that doodled on paper to better recall the details of the call they listened to. This experiment proved how doodling even while listening to someone else talk can help with memory as it was said that the half of the group that doodled recalled 29% more information. 

If you take a look around your classroom, you’ll see that this happens everywhere!

“Doodling helps me to remember more information, and it helps me to calm down,” East Islip student Gabby Ramos said. 

Many people may ask how they could start doodling more often and there are very simple answers to the question. Some ways might be to think of something interesting, like a certain flower or even a little stick figure. The mind has a big part in doodling as most try and think of what to put on the paper, or some other groups would just draw lines on the ends of their papers to distract themselves from boredom.