20% of Americans Have Cluttered Desktops, Here’s Why That’s a Problem

The desktop of your personal computer can say a lot about who you are as a person. If you have a very neat desktop with everything tidily, that suggests that you are a generally well put together individual. However, digital hoarding can be something that anyone might be guilty of without even realizing it. The massive increases in storage capacity as lead to many keeping files and programs around for far longer than they need to, and this is leading to increasingly cluttered desktops.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a survey from HighSpeedInternet revealed that around 20% of Americans have cluttered desktops. That means that they have over 100 items on their desktop that have yet to get properly organized and sorted out.

This should come as no surprise given how easy it is to share files and data through the internet. We tend to receive countless memes, documents and other types of files on a daily basis, and most of us tend to put off sorting through them and deleting older items for a later date which often never comes.

7 tabs turned out to be the average number of opened tabs on a web browser, and that goes for mobile as well as PC users. Additionally, 42% of the people that responded to this survey stated that they have documents on their system that they know they don’t need but in spite of the fact that this is the case they haven’t yet gotten around to deleting them.

App updates are also something that users tend to procrastinate about in numerous ways. 45% of survey respondents stated that they haven’t updated their apps regularly, and that might lead to the apps getting obsolete over time.

Cached data in browsers is also a point of concern because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up slowing down their systems. 25% of users stated that they don’t regularly empty out their cached data, and that means that cookies will continue to track them even if they don’t visit those websites anymore.

Another area where people seem to procrastinate is when it comes to deleting emails. 48% of people said that they never do this, and while 12% say that they need to keep them around for work, it seems unlikely that emails older than a year would be at all useful in that respect.

A major cause for this procrastination might be stress. Cleaning out your inbox may give you some relief, but it won’t be long before the emails and other files start flooding in thereby making it cluttered all over again. In light of this, it is perfectly understandable that users may hesitate to get the job done. The thing is, procrastinating with this task only makes it more stressful as time goes by.

The faster you get it done the better, and making it a regular feature of your routine will ensure that your desktop or email inbox never gets cluttered to begin with! Try to start by putting your disparate files into the proper folders.

Read next: 56% of People Don’t Use VPNs on Public WiFi
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World