Sharing information online can interfere your ability to learn and remember, according to research at Cornell University and Beijing University. In addition to creating a "cognitive overload" that interferes with learning and remembering the information you’ve just retweeted or shared otherwise online, it can diminish your performance in the real world.

"Most people don't post original ideas any more. You just share what you read with your friends," said Qi Wang, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. "But they don't realize that sharing has a downside. It may interfere with other things we do."

Wang’s research, which is published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, showed that "retweeting" interfered with learning and memory, both online and off.

In a laboratory setting at Beijing University, a group of Chinese college students were given a series of messages from Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. After reading each message, members of one group had options either to repost or go on to the next message. The other group was given only the "next" option.

After completing a series of messages, the students were given an online test on the content of those messages.

Students in the repost group gave almost twice as many wrong answers and often showed poor comprehension. What they did remember, they often remembered poorly, Wang said. "For things that they reposted, they remembered especially worse," she added.

The researchers theorized that reposters were suffering from "cognitive overload." When there is a choice to share or not share, the decision itself consumes cognitive resources, Wang explained.

In a second experiment students reviewed a series of Weibo messages and were then given an unrelated paper test on their comprehension of a New Scientist article. Again, participants in the no-feedback group outperformed the reposters.

"The sharing leads to cognitive overload, and that interferes with the subsequent task," Wang said. "In real life when students are surfing online and exchanging information and right after that they go to take a test, they may perform worse," she said.

Other research found that people who use their smartphone to send tweets appear more negative and egotistical than those who tweet from their computers. A 2015 study from the University of London found that tweets sent from phones were 25 percent more negative than those sent from computers.