Digital Hoarding (AKA e-hoarding or cyber-hoarding) is an excessive tendency to acquire electronic material, and a reluctance to delete it when it is no useful to us.
This digital clutter in a growing phenomenon in pop culture, although the medical profession fails to recognize it as a disorder. This is because there is no accumulation of physical objects fundamental to the official definition.
It may also have to do with traditional doctors treating physical symptoms, not underlying psychological causes but that’s a topic for another day.
Moreover Digital Hoarding May Be Partly Down to Bots
Digital clutter may also occur as a result of installing applications that place icons on our desktops. However they remain there because we forget to do monthly housekeeping or an annual spring clean. We may also be afraid of deleting the underlying application by clicking the wrong thing.
Different Cyber Cupboards for Different Types of Clutter
Digital hoards are often half-forgotten because we store them in folders we seldom visit if ever. Here we think of browser icons, browser tabs, digital photo albums, and hidden folders containing ‘you know what’.
Other ‘cybercrime spots’ are email inboxes, internet bookmarks, software and apps we never use, and that great hoard of clutter my (forgotten) documents.
Conventional hoarding science distinguishes between a disorganized ‘hoard’ and a neatly catalogued ‘collection’. Creating email and document folders can be a pathway to ‘salvation’ provided we cull them which we never seem to do.
Are External Folders the Ultimate Hidden Hoard?
A hoarder of physical objects can rent a storage unit for overflow. A digital hoarder can dump files to an external drive never to be opened again. Social media platforms are another place to dump unwanted information we may need some day.
Come to think of it, when did we last do an audit of our Facebook friends, no matter from where they arrived? What causes this obsessive compulsion to keep digital clutter we no longer need? We stopped by the Wikipedia Clinic to find out.
The Acknowledged Causes of Digital Hoarding
# We don’t delete files and folders in case we need them later
# We don’t have a method for sorting data so we can spot unwanted stuff
# It takes less time and effort to do nothing compared to something
# We don’t mass-delete emails in case there’s a permission lurking somewhere
# There’s masses of storage space on modern devices
# Data does not naturally decay we have to delete it
Known Side-Effects of Digital Hoarding
The biggest bind is we can’t find what we are looking for in our unorganised hoard. However Windows does provide a search app to help out. Despite this we may eventually need a new device when the overloaded one starts slowing down.
That said, we simply copy the data across or dump it on a cloud where we forget the passwords. Digital hoarding can be stressful even writing about it. Now if only we had the time we might even try to get rid of the clutter.
But not this file … or that folder … or that image … or that video though. We forgot we had them. We’ll need to open them first (when we ever have the time).