Hi, I’m Alyss and I’m an iPhone hoarder. You might be one too, you just don’t know it yet.
Before I had my beloved iPhone I’m pretty sure the term ‘hoarding’ just meant collecting of physical objects, but now hoarding has a more technical meaning. By technical, I mean we have the capability to actually ‘hoard’ things within our phones.
Take one look on my phone and you will see (perfectly ordered) folders of apps that I do not use, but refuse to delete. From the Train line app (I rarely get trains) because it fits into my ‘green’ folder, to Periscope, which should have been deleted long ago. Venture into my Notes – if you dare – and I’ve got list after list of recipes, food meal plans, what workouts I’m doing that week, texts I’ve pre-written so they sound better, my money situation calculated into a text format – you get the picture.
Swipe across to Instagram and you will not only see hundreds upon hundreds of saved images within my ‘saved’ folder – you will now see ‘collections’ of those exact same images, neatly packaged like Pinterest folders into different categories. There’s an interior one, there’s a ‘red one,’ there’s even a folder full of chairs I’ve been side-eyeing when I should be working (sorry, editor). Collections was only introduced two days ago and I’ve already gone into overload making ‘inspirational’ and ‘aspirational’ folders when I could have been talking to my mates. So why is it we feel the need to save everything on our phones? What’s the psychology behind phone hoarding?
‘To hoard,’ or ‘hoarding’ is defined as the ‘amassing or stocking of things which can lead to a serious problem if not controlled.’ Being a casual hoarder isn’t necessarily something we would frown upon, in-fact it’s general acceptable in society as normal behaviour. It’s not until an individual ventures into compulsive hoarder territory that it can become a psychological disorder.
Cherstin M.Lyon talks a bit about the concept of why we hoard in her book, Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences. She explains that the ‘fundamental realities of collecting is that it is impossible to hold on to everything. Knowing that we cannot save every document, material object, structure of landscape requires that we must make choices about what we keep and what we do not.’
We hold onto things we think will have value, or will be useful in the future. This then becomes an issue when we are no longer able to make a choice about what to keep, and what not to keep. And with the influx of technology, here lies the issue – we are now able to save everything. Not in a physical form, but with one tap on our phones we can save images, notes, even big documents and then pop it into our back pocket. 2017 version of hoarding is just being able to write your ex a text and then never send it. Instead we suspend it in iPhone space, until it becomes of use one drunken night when you're feeling brave enough to hit send.
Dr Zoubida Guernina, author of Community and Health Psychology in Practice, told me that from a psychological perspective, ‘our constant need to save images and notes on our phones is related to the deep-seated fear of the unconscious [or the id]. We follow trends when we are not fully aware what is going on within our inner lives.’ The unconscious, according to the Freudian theory, refers to the mental processes of which individuals make themselves unaware. We like to think we’re in charge, but in reality, we make the same mistakes over and over – and our unconscious mind has a huge part to play in this. Saving images, notes, apps on our phone is an extension of those ‘mistakes’ (perhaps on a lesser scale) but we save so frequently that we don’t realise we’re making these small mistakes.
She goes on to mention that: ‘our focus is more on the outer things, like hoarding images, notes, CDs, books etc. This is all related to our psychological need to control, and in accumulating things on our phones it compensates our desire to feel secure as we feel as though we have not ‘lost’ things.’
When I asked her if we should be wary of hoarding too many things within our phones, and if it could become dangerous, like physical hoarding, Guernina mentioned that if we could live without hoarding our phones we would survive better without the ‘clutter.’
For me, it’s simple because I like having stuff. I have lots of stuff in my flat, stuff I don’t need, as well as too much stuff on my phone – and until now I’ve never thought about why I like it. To revert back to what Guernina said, I collect those things (both in real life, and saved on my phone) because I want to follow a trend, and save it before even thinking about what it really means.
As a self-confessed iPhone hoarder, I suddenly feel very wary of the hundreds (or thousands) of ‘things’ saved on my phone. I thought saving them meant control. I saved them so I could revert back to them in the future when they would have a use. Having them there must mean I was a highly organised individual, right? Wrong. Actually it could just mean I’m making the same mistake again and again with the tap of a button – and really my life would be better without both physical clutter in my flat, and on my phone. Time to delete some photos? Maybe…
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The #Struggles Of Trying To Throw Out Clothes When You’re A Hoarder
Follow Alyss on Instagram @alyssbowen
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.