Last Tuesday was when my wife discovered my secret. She had taken my laptop to access her emails while hers updated. Then, I heard a gasp coming from the living room.
“Marcus, what is THIS?”
I wasn’t shocked about her finding something. Not an illicit correspondence or questionable search history—something that would be way more revealing about my psyche. In this case, it would be my browser situation. More specifically, the 147 tabs split over 23 windows that I had been meticulously grouping for weeks. My digital binge, laid bare for the unflattering glare of spousal scrutiny. To be frank, I was terrified.
“I’m in the process of reading them,” I told her softly, and I felt pathetic at this point. It became even worse when I claimed my words were about to escape my mouth.
She flipped through windows filled with articles, recipes, abandoned shopping carts, product manuals, travel destinations, and research papers. “There’s a New Yorker piece here from 2018,” she said while smiling. “Have you been ‘reading’ it for five years?”
That was the last defense I could muster. The article on AI’s future had been sitting in my browser for so long it felt like ‘digital furniture.’ Something I no longer used but rather a mark in the terrain of my browser which I found too difficult to get rid of. What if, five years down the line, that specific viewpoint became suddenly useful in a discussion? What if I needed it? Closing it felt like choosing to forget willfully, which made me cognizant of how I always seek to avoid having to say ‘I wish I hadn’t lost this book I can’t even open my library of if I want to.’
I am a tab hoarder, allowing me to introduce myself as Marcus. You see, my work computer is worse off, whereas, I have 103 tabs open and 17 windows on my personal laptop. Repeated crashes alongside ‘clean-up’ sessions hadn’t taught me to do better. On my phone, I’ve reached the stage where chrome no longer signifies the number of open tabs, instead changing it to a cheerful 🙂 which feels more passive aggressive than helpful. My work laptop is in worse shape.
This has been a recurring concern over the years. I vividly recall in the mid-2000’s feeling that rush of excitement when I was able to keep multiple web pages open due to the introduction of tab browsing. Browsing the w3 had required separate windows, which at best forced you to clutter your desk, but now was simplified into the sleek and compact tabs holding everything needed in a singular row. This was a true game changer where one was able to maintain several digital contexts simultaneously. However, in today’s world, this novelty has shifted from being a productivity booster to a psychological burden masked as efficiency for most.
The phenomenon of tab hoarding is deeply rooted in modern society’s relationship with technology and the information age. Each tab can be conceived as a digitally stored magazine awaiting to capture someone’s interest where everything is on hold indefinitely. Tabs serve the same purpose as the stack of New Yorker magazines that you intend to read perched on your nightstand. Looking at cluttered screens isn’t the issue as tabs unlike magazines do not occupy physical space, generate visible dust or prompt intervention from family members.
But, as I found out the hard way, my wife’s sudden intervention completely changed the story. My cubical inspired digital environment meant that I could have endless amounts of tabs open. This wants the equivalent to those homes on online documentaries about hoarding. Where you are forced onto paths that wind through towering stacks off figurines and newspapers, with no escape.
“That collection of yours can’t be healthy for your computer,” she said, analyzing it_dying to know more_while scrolling.
>”Let’s be clear, your brain isn’t in the best shape either…”
Both statements of hers were absolutely correct. The exhaust fan of my laptop runs perpetually, battery life is an even greater concern, and the device itself has a tendency to freeze every once in a while as if refusing to accept the burden of cognitive tasks that I have toiled on it. And the brain… we still have some work to do here!
Studies indicate that the digital hoarding initiatives we indulge in create extensive psychological burdens that present themselves as looming judgment, fragmented concentration, and an all-consuming dread of tasks left undone.
I acknowledge those findings hold premise in me. Every single open window on my browser turns the burden onto my shoulder by demanding instant and undivided cognitive investment. All individually, they create a mild hissing or buzzing noise of unaccomplished things tailing me throughout the day, collectively. Still, I persist at opening new tabs greater than the number of the tabs I can successfully shut.
Clearly, the answer reveals a construct far more intricate than apparent unorderliness of one’s environment. The tab intervention my wife staged forced me to confront a question I haven’t found an answer to:
What worst can happen if I decide to click on that close button?
Every open tab symbolizes a version of myself I hope to grow into. The me who will actually read that 5,000-word analysis of water conflicts tied to geopolitics. The me who will effortlessly learn Python programming through that one thorough tutorial series. The me who will successfully follow that complicated sourdough recipe. The me who will do extensive research on every possible trek itinerary and finally book that dream trip to Japan. Closing these tabs is an acknowledgment of the chasm between my aspirational self and actual behavior; confronting myself, albeit in a limited sense, with my own bounds.
This also comes with the anxiety of forgetting. Forgetting how to access information that may one day come in handy. In the current era of overflowing information, the concern isn’t about Windows scarcity; it’s about retrieval. It’s not a matter of whether something exists, but whether it’ll be possible to find it again when needed. With each tab, there is an additional breadcrumb in an extremely convoluted trail through a digital forest. A trail that I’m terrified to give up since it leads to an ideal article, important product, or crucial information.
I am not the only person experiencing tab pathology. In relation to the tab dilemma I am facing, sharing it with my colleagues brought forth a host of confessions. One of them conceded that he keeps in excess of 300 tabs open over several browsers. Another bizarrely explained how she once had an elaborate color-coded system for tabs organized into different windows for different projects which, in the end, devolved into a disorganized digital mess. One of the junior developers had a solution that he showed me—a browser extension that ‘sleeps’ unused tabs, allowing them to be hoarded without actually serving a purpose.
“I actually had to upgrade my RAM because of my tabs,” he exclaimed to me, part proud, and part embarrassed, like an owner indulging a whimsical but endearing pet.
Advice directed at us as a collective is abundant online. Recommendations range from “use bookmarks,” and “try extensions focused on managing tabs” to more regulated suggestions like “set a schedule for regular digital clean-ups.” All of these recommendations are ultimately counterproductive because they fail to resolve the core issue of chronic tab hoarding, which is an underlying fear of forgetting, an innate desire to plan ahead, and a general fear of missing out which compels the user to constantly accumulate unused digital interfaces.
I can confidently say this because I have personally tested all of them. My bookmarks, alongside my tabs, are digital drawers to be cleared out, crammed with expired hyperlinks and endless pages languishing on the verge of being forgotten. I’ve at least tried five different tab management applications that I ended up uninstalling. Owing to my attempts to declutter, I have tried scheduled clean-ups, which wait to conveniently end with “just a few“ meaningful tabs, only for those tabs to exponentially outnumber in a matter of time.
Two years ago, the most impactful intervention took place fully by accident when a system freeze killed all of my browsers without saving my session. Genuine panic ensued when a browser was opened and the sight of… nothing. Just a blank new tab page a digital blue sky greeted me with. I couldn’t help but wonder which of the bits and pieces of information I had, had been obliterated into the ether, so I had to forcibly hold my breath, waiting for the constraining numbness to sink in.
Then again, something completely unexpected enventually led to that conclusion. A surge of lightness, barriers embracing me from each side began to dissolve without slabs of tabs. With my painstakingly curated tabs lacking permit, I was coerced into deciding what was geared towards actual importance at that moment in time not at some hypothetical in the future. multitasking became effortless.
My liberation lasted for almost three days until I began accumulating tabs again. But those three days showed me a crucial aspect concerning the nature of digital hoarding: It isn’t exactly about the need of accessing the information. Instead, it’s about the illusion of control. The relief that comes with the belief that by keeping everything open, visible, and accessible, we somehow manage the flow of information in modern life.
A noteworthy analogy exists between tab hoarding and many other digital actions. Infinte inboxes filled with unread messages. Unused applications piled on a phone’s home screen. Unedited photos packed into a camera reel. Digital hoarding takes on various forms, but the reasoning remains the same: the lack of decisiveness, unresolved anxiety, the urge to be wished of, the digital contents known as “memories,” and the fear of reality.
Professionally I started to boar tabs and it only peaked when I encountered uncertainty. As I coped with my place in the tech space and attempted to look for new avenues, my browser was a reflection of multi-faceted options. There were tabs such as articles dealing with shifting careers, new skill courses, and even research about changing lifestyles. Each of those tabs symbolized a different version of myself. Closing any of those tabs would mean giving up on choices which is something I’d never want to do before truly coming to terms with this reality.
Understanding these patterns has been helpful in attending to my digital habits mindfully. Instead of considering my many tabs as a peculiar but insignificant systematic blunder, I now regard them as signs directed towards deeper questions. For instance, what am I too afraid to forget? What version of myself do I wish to be, but am not working towards? What decisions am I avoiding in order to keep all possible options open for eternity?
To answer these questions, I have begun implementing a new system aimed at addressing the issues with my overflowing tabs. When I notice my tabs skirting dangerously close to the tipping point, I no longer resort to panic stricken processing, or chaotic whittling. Instead, I now take time to ask why I am keeping each individual tab. There are instances where my reasoning is perfectly valid, such as: it’s a current project reference, a text I’m planning to read later, or a tool I’m using actively. But more often than not, the answer reveals far more concerning things about one’s aspirations, worries, or avoidance patterns.
An example might be an article featuring Italian for beginners. It’s a goal I’m certainly not prioritizing at the moment, and I do wish I were that kind of person who speaks several languages.
Or consider the dozen of tabs concerning hypothetical home renovation projects. It is a clear sign of having productive procrastination instead of addressing the work that actually needs their attention.
The scholarly article that I opened three months ago? It is a kind of status anxiety – appearing to myself and to others (or to myself) as someone who studies their field and keeps track of recent developments within it—even though I do not have the time to actually do so.
This particular approach has not solved all my tab hording issues yet. As I also pointed out, I still have well over a hundred open tabs with me at the moment. But it has changed my relationship with the phenomenon of digital accumulation from automatic to a more conscious accumulation that one engages in consciously. I find myself closing more tabs these days when I acknowledge the aspirational thinking and anxiety that is forcing me to keep the tabs open. I have come to recognize truly useful contexts versus the reassuring delusion of “keeping track” of more information than any brain could actually process.
My spouse has begun to conduct what she refers to as “wellness checks” in relation to how I have organized my web browser. “How are we doing today? Double digits yet?” she will ask while peeking over my shoulder at the geometric arrangement of increasingly compressed tabs. I am sometimes managing well – thirty, forty tabs strung across a couple of windows. Other times… well, old habits die hard.
As I gather, tab hoarding does not involve technology in any way. Rather, it concerns how people manage attention, intention, and the overwhelming information overflowing in the world. The tabs themselves have no real importance; they are only traces of the difficulties that one faces while living in a world with a boundless concept of information such as reading, watching, or knowing.
So if you find yourself viewing this with 147 tabs of your own perched precariously at the top of the browser, rest assured, you are not the only one in this digital collection. Ask yourself what those tabs symbolize beyond their pages. Try to examine what goals, fears, or avoidance patterns they may expose. And then, if you are brave enough, shut a few of them. You have my word, the world won’t come to an end. Even if the tabs are not constantly displayed, the information is still accessible.
If suddenly, you find a shocking sense of relief washing over you as your browser digitally exhales a sigh of unburdened RAM, welcome to recovery’s first step. We tab hoarding addicts might never grasp the reckless ability to fully overcome the habit, but realizing the psychological implications is a reward substantial enough to forgo the feeling of being digitally detoxed.
