This morning I was thinking about my Flip Phone February post yesterday and the fact that I miss having immediate access to my voicemails and a long scrollable list of text messages while using my Light phone. I feel nostalgic about the fact that I don't have the well-designed container for my conversations with family, or easy-to-download recordings of their voices.
It made me start thinking about the ways digital storage provides comfort, like having 20 emotional support browser taps open permanently on your browser with articles that you may never read, but the idea that one day you might makes you feel smart.
I was a big fan of the TV show Hoarders when it came out and have read a bit about the root causes. One of the major triggers for hoarders is grief. In some cases the hoarding behavior comes out of the person’s inability to cope with a major loss. It made me wonder if some of our need for our phones and the insane amount of data they store for us is a form of digital hoarding.
As I began to write this I found that there are of course already articles written on the subject of digital hoarding, as well as pro-digital hoarding Reddit feeds. While many jobs require digital hoarding because of a lack of good infrastructure, as a freelance graphic designer I know this well, I’m most interested in digital hoarding in people’s personal lives.
For example, what are you going to do with the thousands of photos and videos you took? Chances are I will rarely if ever look at the video I made while taking the architectural boat tour in Chicago. One of my biggest vices is taking tons of screenshots then never looking at them again. If a sign of hoarding is overwhelm, then my photo library has me in over my head.
This line of thought brings me back to the reason I decided to participate in Flip Phone February in the first place: seeing and being horrified by the sea of people in front of the Arc de Triomphe on NYE taking video rather than celebrating the clock striking midnight. I wrote about it here at the beginning of January, which is when I was sent Kashmir’s original article about doing a month-long digital detox with a flip phone.
I had originally assumed this behavior of the dystopian New Year’s Eve goers was motivated purely by the potential ego boost of wanting to show off to friends and family that they were there. But thinking about digital hoarding, I realized the problem might be more complex. Yes, social media and all the cool things we share is a form of social capital. But I think there’s something more.
Could it be that the compulsive collecting of moments in our phones is a symptom of unprocessed grief? The amount of trauma and loss from the pandemic alone, not to mention wars and the climate crisis, is enough to push a generation into their little digital turtle shells. If the present moment is too fleeting and too unsure, maybe we can contain it with our devices so that it can be carried with us to be enjoyed later.
I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts on this. This is a totally different conclusion than I had when I first started this Flip Phone February project. I am grateful to be in this mindset now because I feel more compassionate towards myself and my fellow smartphone addicts. I am also really seeing the patterns behind my own unhealthy, unproductive smartphone usage. As I say in one of my posts, my usage goes way up when I’m feeling HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired)- which is an acronym used in recovery programs to help stave off potential triggers.
My brain space has really opened up and I have definitely had my moments of falling off the wagon. Sometimes you just have to scroll, baby.
To finish I wanted to share a video of a (very white, upper middle-class) New Year’s Eve movie supercut where no one is on their phones as the clock strikes 12.
When I would be working on a book or screenplay, I always had an "Edits" doc, where I could cut my darlings (rather than kill them) and paste them into that separate file so they were available if/when I needed them. They weren't lost forever (and I think that eased the anxiety of editing...I could always put them back). I think that hoarding is a bit of optimism, rather than grief, at least for me. I'm better at tossing out (recycling when possible) holiday and birthday cards, but not photos or meaningful notes/letters. I even screenshot kind posts from others, just because they make me smile. I, too, was a fan of "Hoarders" and have known a few in my time (my grandmother being one...who knew not everyone had a "junk room" in their house?). I think there's a difference between keeping ev-er-y-thing and keeping a lot of stuff that you like/created/makes you feel good. I would keep that video of the boat tour, Sarah. You never know how it could be used again. 😉 xo