Big Words: Digital Hoarding #13
Big Words is a fashion dictionary in progress, capturing the emerging lexicon and giving shape to the dynamic discourse of contemporary fashion. Discover and learn.
Digital Hoarding:
Digital hoarding is the act of accumulating material or information for potential future use by saving, archiving, or storing it in digital formats. Typical collections of digital hoarders can include emails, photos, articles, podcasts, and various computer files, which they believe they might want to revisit. Yet, in many instances, they rarely end up using, reading, or listening to these hoarded items.
There are evident parallels between digital hoarding behaviours and physical hoarding behaviours, with both potentially causing psychological distress. Strong emotional attachments are often formed with specific types of digital possessions.
The propensity for digital hoarding is on the rise, largely due to the expansive availability of digital materials (e.g., files, photographs, music, apps) and the growing accessibility of affordable storage solutions. Research suggests that individuals can form attachments to non-physical possessions as strong as those to physical ones, as these digital items become integrated into their identity and self-conception.
Noteworthy Findings:
In a study titled Clouds End, interviews with 35 adult video gamers indicated that participants had emotional attachments to digital items within video games, regardless of the lack of legal ownership and materiality.Emotional attachment levels to digital possessions and digital hoarding scores were observed to be higher in participants who selected digital images or videos than in those who chose documents, e-mails, or texts. The intensity of emotional attachment to digital possessions can vary depending on the specific nature of the digital item.
The fashion industry is poised to confront the implications of digital hoarding soon, especially as it launches an increasing number of digital products like filters, digital assets, NFTs, and memberships.
Sources: Cyborg Anthropology, UCLA Health, National Library of Medicine.
Contributor: Beata Wilczek.