Most of us have hundreds of unread emails, folders stuffed with files we will never open again, and phone storage perpetually at its limit. A new study suggests this kind of digital clutter is not just a modern inconvenience but a psychologically meaningful behaviour with roots in the same cognitive and emotional patterns that drive physical hoarding disorder. The findings were published in Behavioral Sciences.
Researchers from universities in Chile analysed data from 344 university students to examine whether the psychological factors associated with hoarding disorder also drive digital hoarding. Using a statistical modelling approach, they looked at six key factors, including stress, anxiety, enjoyment, attention, memory, and decision-making, and measured their effects on both types of hoarding behaviour.
The results showed that stress was the single most influential factor in both physical and digital hoarding. People who reported higher levels of stress were significantly more likely to accumulate and struggle to delete both physical possessions and digital files. The researchers suggest that hoarding, whether of objects or data, may function as a coping mechanism that provides a sense of security and control during difficult periods.
Memory concerns were also found to play a major role, particularly in digital hoarding. People who worried about forgetting important information were more likely to retain large volumes of digital content, such as emails, screenshots, and documents, apparently as a safeguard against losing access to things they might need later. Enjoyment was another significant factor, with people who derived satisfaction from saving and organising items being more likely to accumulate both physical and digital possessions.
Interestingly, three factors that might seem relevant turned out to have no significant effect on either form of hoarding. Anxiety, attention difficulties, and poor decision-making were all non-significant predictors. The researchers suggest this may be because most studies linking these factors to hoarding have used clinical populations, whereas their sample consisted of non-clinical university students.
One of the most striking findings was that hoarding disorder directly predicted digital hoarding. Students who showed tendencies consistent with physical hoarding disorder were substantially more likely to exhibit digital hoarding behaviour as well. The model explained 37.6% of the variance in digital hoarding, with physical hoarding disorder emerging as the strongest direct predictor.
The study also found that hoarding disorder acts as a mediating mechanism. In other words, stress, enjoyment, and memory did not just influence digital hoarding directly but also did so indirectly through their effects on physical hoarding tendencies. This suggests the two behaviours share an underlying psychological architecture rather than being entirely separate phenomena.
The researchers are clear that digital hoarding is not simply an extension of physical hoarding. The relative weight of different factors shifts between the two contexts, with memory playing a more prominent role in digital hoarding than in its physical counterpart. This distinction indicates that digital environments introduce specific dynamics of their own, shaped by the ease of storage and the information-heavy nature of digital life.
For students in particular, the findings carry practical weight. Academic pressures generate considerable stress, and that stress may feed directly into the accumulation of files, notes, and emails that never get deleted.