Just because much of the space in your home isn’t taken up by piles of newspapers, magazines, plastic bags, glass jars, old toys, worn out shoes and damaged computer peripherals doesn’t mean that you are no longer a hoarder. If you have lots and lots of icons on the desktop of your computer or unusable blurry snapshots on your smart phone, then you are also considered as a hoarder — a digital hoarder, that is!
This article will get you introduced to the signs that you may in fact have digital hoarding disorder.
Make sure that you share this article on your various social media sites afterwards especially if you feel that some of your family members and friends are digital hoarders, too.
Hoarding, which is also referred to as compulsive hoarding or hoarding disorder, is defined as a behavioral pattern that is characterized by excessive collection of objects — and having the inability or unwillingness to get rid of them despite of the fact that their presence is causing impairment or distress. It’s actually in the medical literature, and it’s often associated with problems such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression.
Just because digital hoarding disorder is not in the medical books doesn’t mean that it’s not real — it is an actual problem that many are exhibiting these days. This is most especially true as digital storage spaces are getting larger and larger and at the same time cheaper and cheaper.
Do you think that you may be a digital hoarder? Here are some of the telltale signs:
You Have Tons of Unread Emails in Your Inbox
If Gmail is telling you that you have already exceeded the storage limit amounting to 15GB, which is actually a sizeable amount, then you may be suffering from digital hoarding disorder. It’s very much likely that the culprits are those lots and lots of subscription mails and newsletters that you are not reading.
The problem can be dealt with by using the delete all function or unsubscribing.
You Have Thousands of Saved Photos
Thanks to digital point-and-shoot cameras and smartphones with snappers, anybody can be a photographer (or a model) in his or her own right. Even if you own a 2 TB external hard drive or a cell phone boasting of a 256 GB storage, it doesn’t mean that you should keep every single snapshot around, including those that are unusable or has no meaning.
Why keep all 800 photos if only 8 of them are sharp and worthy of posting on social media?
You Have a Phone That Gives You a Headache
Speaking of cell phone — do you end up with a nagging headache each time you clutch your smartphone in order to send a text message or take a selfie? Chances are your trusted device is jam packed with icons and apps that you do not really need, preventing you from easily accessing some that are in fact useful to you.
Uninstalling anything that’s of no use lets you reduce clutter and also enjoy more available storage space.
You Have Bookmarked Innumerable Pages
The bookmark feature of your favorite web browser is heaven sent-sent — it allows you to revisit or check out sites at a different time. You know that you are a digital hoarder if you have bookmarked enough pages that you will never run out of something to read for an entire year. But you really have no time to read all of them.
Just because something seems interesting doesn’t necessarily mean that it can make life more meaningful.
You Have No Idea Who Your “Friends” Are
Just because you have 5,000 friends on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a friendly individual. There is no reason for you to remain digital friends with individuals you are not really interested in. You may have an impressive-looking profile, but it can make you feel empty if you don’t personally know 90 percent of your Facebook contacts.
Unfriend anyone you do not know — quality is more important than quantity.
