Disgraced fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — the notorious SBF — just could also be a digital hoarder.
In response to a recent Business Insider report, the laptop of the previous FTX CEO is flooded with a lot data that FBI officials are working additional time to research the content.
But SBF is removed from alone in his apparent reluctance to depart with copious amounts of knowledge.
Actually, digital hoarding — a subtype of hoarding disorder that involves the gathering of, and difficulty parting with, excessive amounts of digital material — is a growing problem within the US and beyond.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) recognizes hoarding disorder as a mental illness.
Now, some academics are asking if it’s time to add digital hoarding to the bible of psychiatry.
In response to work carried out by tech researcher Maitrik Kataria and his colleagues at digital product engineering firm Simform, the typical American has a minimum of 40 apps installed on their phone — but use lower than 50 percent of them.
Tens of millions of Americans have inboxes with greater than 1,000 unread emails.
And a few 60% of Americans never delete any pictures or videos from any of their digital devices.
Dr. Darshana Sedera, the deputy dean and director of the Digital Enterprise Lab at Southern Cross University, Australia, warns that digital hoarding is on the rise — and that the results could prove to be severe.
His research, he said, shows that the gathering and storage of digital content tends to extend as our “variety of technological footsteps” increase.
Dr. Sedera, who has published quite a few papers on the disorder, said there appears to be a positive correlation between the variety of social media platforms a user uses and the quantity of content they store.
Furthermore, his team has observed a powerful relationship between the variety of storage platforms (e.g., Google Drive, iCloud, etc.) used and a rise in digital hoarding.
In terms of this moderately recent phenomenon, not all generations are affected equally.
In a single study, Dr. Sedera and his colleagues compared the digital hoarding behaviors of Gen Xers, which they define as those born between 1965-1980, and Millennials, who were born after 1980.
“We found that each groups displayed symptoms of digital hoarding,” he noted.
Nevertheless, Millennials displayed “much stronger tendencies of digital hoarding.”
With younger generations, especially digital natives, it’s logical to expect even greater levels of hoarding behavior, in accordance with Sedera.
Digital hoarding does have consequences for mental health.
“When one suffers from the symptoms of digital hoarding [constant acquisition, difficulty of discarding, clutter propensity] there may be a powerful likelihood that he or she’s going to experience hostile mental or psychological conditions,” Sedera said.
Dr. Bárbara Perdigão Stumpf, a Brazilian psychiatrist who has also studied the hazards of the disorder, told the Post that “comorbidity is common” — especially major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder and even attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Nevertheless, not all digital hoarders are created equally, in accordance with psychologist Dr. Nick Neave.
The British academic told The Post that, “in research led by Dr Kerry McKellar and published within the journal Interacting with Computers in 2020, we found that digital hoarding was relatively common, but there gave the impression to be different ‘types’ of digital hoarder, with their hoarding driven by different reasons.”
These groups were labelled as followed:
Anxiety-driven
People who find themselves anxious about eliminating any information they may need in the longer term, either as evidence or a reminder. (This “just in case” mentality is usually a belief set of physical hoarders.)
Compliance-driven
Those that retain digital files to comply with policies and procedures (business related, government related, etc.) That said, these users are likely to delete files with no second thought once they’re clearly not required.
Disengagement-driven
This category sums up people completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of emails or files they’ve amassed, but who select to not delete it in case they unintentionally do away with something vital.
Collection-driven
These are individuals who keep their data organized but very rarely delete any of it beyond obvious spam. They have an inclination to make use of external devices to back up their files and see this role as a part of their identity, particularly within the workplace.
Actually, “A whole lot of digital hoarding is driven by the workplace: limitless emails and circulating documents with people often unsure about data retention, storage and deletion policies,” Dr. Neave said. “People often send files to everyone as they’re apprehensive about ‘missing people out’ or to be viewed as not doing a ‘good job.’
“This creates an environment where most employees retain digital data that they don’t need — and could be a major problem by way of data protection. And the environmental costs of running servers filled with digital data is generally unnecessary.”
Because the psychology and tech author Sakshi Udavant noted last 12 months, digital hoarding also appears to have a very dark side — revenge.
Studies show that individuals usually confess to hoarding files with the intention of weaponizing them in the longer term.
Revenge porn, a form of digital abuse during which a person shares sexually explicit imagery without the consent of those pictured, is one among the more nefarious examples of this weaponization.
