Are Tech Companies Making Us Digital Hoarders?
Psych 🧠- 405/500
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What is it?
Digital hoarding is the obsessive collection of digital data and reluctance to delete it, even when it's unnecessary.
Researchers found that people develop emotional attachments to their digital content, similar to how they feel about physical possessions.
However, because storage feels "invisible" and cheap, they accumulate a lot more than they realize. Companies have created systems that promote this, while offering ways to declutter by AI to make profit.
Key Findings:
People underestimate how much digital storage they're using.
They think digital storage is "free" after paying for it, even though there are real costs (Zero Perceived Marginal Cost Fallacy).
They feel anxious about deleting digital items (Deletion Anxiety).
Four types of digital hoarders exist: Anxious Preservationists, Passive Accumulators, Sentimental Curators, and Strategic Archivists.
There's a "Digital Retention Cycle" where easy acquisition, unregulated storage, and pressure over deleting leads to just buying more storage.
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What do I need to know:
Digital hoarding is a real phenomenon with psychological and economic roots.
Cloud storage can make you collect tons of digital items without even knowing.
The authors mention for technologists and the regulators to give consumers more visibility over content and try to make retention more sensible and better for the environment.
Source:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5172811