Do students need to memorize facts in the digital age?

Memory is essential to all learning, because it lets you store and retrieve the information that you learn. Memory is basically nothing more than the record left by a learning process.
Thus, memory depends on learning. But learning also depends on memory, because the knowledge stored in your memory provides the framework to which you link new knowledge, by association. And the more extensive your framework of existing knowledge, the more easily you can link new knowledge to it. If this is what you are talingh about the answer is " of Course!" However, I thought what you were surveying is Memorinzinf facts. So read on!

I do not believe that memorization is a Black and White issue. I do think that there are many skills that require a good memory. I also believe that using the brain to memorize is a function will increase that area of the brain. There are certain facts that should be indoctrinated in the brain through the process of memorization.
I learned poems, the Gettysburgh Address, the ten commandments, Preamble to the Constitution, and several other historical writings.

As a high school math teacher I see students everyday that have great difficulty with basic multiplication. Most (no exaggeration) that I come in contact now have not learned / memorized the multiplication facts from 1 through 10, and I believe that it has reduced their ability to make connections and detect patterns in numbers. When memorized some basic facts (ie. math facts) allow for the construction of more complicated concepts in the mind of the student. Not all memorization is bad.