Does cloud storage have a downside?
Hoarding is typically associated with possessions such as books, papers, clothing and even food. However, a new iteration of hoarding has emerged in the last decade—digital hoarding.
Similar to its physical counterpart, digital hoarding is when a person amasses various text messages, emails, pictures, GIFs, memes and videos that have long outlived their usefulness to the point of reaching data capacity.
Psychologists claim that the combination of social media and inexpensive computer storage “in the cloud” can enable people to save everything because it’s “out of sight and out of mind.” Normally this is not a problem in itself. However, behavioral experts define digital hoarding when there is an uncontrollable urge to save everything that in turn causes related stress and anxiety.
Digital hoarders range from organized collectors to accidental hoarders who are disorganized, don’t know what they have, and don’t have control over it. Anxious hoarders have strong emotional ties to what they save, and in the workplace, there are hoarders by instruction whose job requires them to keep company data. However, there are those who take their responsibilities to extremes leading to negative consequences for themselves and the company.
Perhaps this is digital “food for thought” in favor of periodically cleaning out those inboxes?