Many, many tabs open? Digital hoarding?

So, I asked AI and here's what I learned...

Based on the sources and our conversation history, there does appear to be a connection between the behavior of keeping a large number of tabs open and the concept of "hoarding," particularly in a digital sense.

Here's what the sources suggest:

Intentional Organization (Often Leads to Chaos): People frequently keep many tabs open with the intention of organizing their work, keeping resources handy for research or projects. The idea is to have all needed information readily accessible. Before using tools like OneTab, keeping tabs open was a way to remember to come back to them later.

Digital "Filing Cabinet" Mentality: The desire to keep things for later access or for ongoing tasks can lead to an "overwhelming number of open tabs". One source explicitly describes OneTab, which is used to manage these saved tabs, as being like an "online digital file folder" or a "digital filing cabinet". This suggests the tabs themselves are being treated as temporary files or items to be kept and potentially organized.

Direct Reference to "Internet Hoarding": In the context of discussing saving large numbers of tabs, one user in the Reddit source directly uses the term "internet hoarding" to describe having accumulated "7381 tabs that I've saved over the past 5 years". This is a clear link drawn by a user between saving/keeping a vast quantity of digital items (tabs) and the term "hoarding".

Fear of Loss: The sources highlight that using OneTab helps prevent losing your stored tabs. Some alternatives to OneTab are discussed in the context of users having "lost tabs", and one user in the Reddit discussion is distraught about potentially losing thousands of saved tabs. This concern about losing tabs could be an underlying reason why someone might feel the need to keep them open in the first place – a reluctance to close them for fear they'll be lost or forgotten, which parallels aspects of physical hoarding where items are kept due to a fear of needing them later or a distress associated with discarding them.

Negative Consequences Similar to Physical Clutter: While the intention might be organization, keeping "a million tabs open" leads to "overwhelming Tab chaos", "tab clutter", and makes it difficult to find specific pages. This digital clutter also has tangible downsides like taking up significant computer memory and reducing CPU load, potentially slowing down the computer. These consequences – a lack of functional organization despite the quantity, difficulty locating items, and a negative impact on the surrounding "space" (the computer's performance) – can be seen as digital parallels to the challenges faced in physical hoarding situations.

In summary, while the sources don't delve into the clinical psychology of hoarding, they show that keeping an excessive number of tabs open is a common behavior driven by a desire to organize and retain information. This behavior is directly referred to as "internet hoarding" by at least one user. The negative outcomes (clutter, difficulty finding things) and potential underlying factors (fear of loss) associated with this digital behavior bear resemblance to aspects of physical hoarding.