Digital Clutter

Although I have no statistics to back me up, I suspect that digital clutter plagues as many people as physical clutter does. Crowding on our desktops or in our e-mail inboxes may not take up physical space, but it does take up space in the most important location we all deal with daily: our heads. We're inclined to notice the discomfort if we're lugging around an overstsuffed backpack, but too often we dismiss the nagging weight of too much burdensome stuff on our minds. Digital clutter at its worst is evident in hoarding behavior.

Wall Street Journal: Hoarding Goes Digital

"Digital clutter doesn't beget mice or interfere with walking around the house," says Kit Anderson, past president of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, a nonprofit in St. Louis, that studies hoarding behaviors. "But it's more insidious because no one else is going to insist that you get help."

Hoarding behaviors in the digital world are likely to be as difficult to handle as in the physical world, but most of us can tackle our digital clutter in the same way we tackle our real world stuff. If you Google "digital clutter," you'll find many links devoted to solutions to the problem. Some of them require mastering software that's designed to help you get organized. But using this software is rather like buying more storage containers for the stuff that's cluttering your home: it doesn't deal with the problem itself. The real solution: let it go.

After you've tossed the excess, some of those organizing programs can help you sort what you've decided to keep and prevent digital clutter in the future. But, just as in real life, the real trick is to avoid accumulating more stuff that you don't need. And if you do slip, remember that the delete key is your friend.

Technology and Convenient Shopping

There's a fine line between offering convenience to shoppers and manipulating them. I'm not sure where that line is drawn -- probably in different places for different people -- but we, the consumers, would have to stop shopping altogether to avoid all the subtle and not so subtle maneuvering that influences us. Because that's an unlikely proposition, all we can do is become aware of what they're coming up with to steer us in the direction they want us to go: the cash register. Here are some of the latest "convenient" ways that we're being encouraged to part with our money:

Mastercard wants to make shopping and paying on your smartphone easier with a soon-to-be-available Google Wallet app: "Utilizing gesture recognition tech, items could be selected on-screen by holding your hand over an item and navigating through the checkout process." Literally, wave your hand and you've got what you want!

WalMart plans to use social media data to figure out how to sell to you. This includes: "Using data from social-media interactions in the neighborhoods around Walmart stores to help determine how to stock them. Providing gift suggestions for your friends and family members based on what they’ve been talking about on Facebook and Twitter. [Sending] alerts from smartphone apps that flag you while you’re shopping in Walmart about products in sync with your social genome." Fortunately, those alerts will be an opt-in choice.

Macy's and Bloomingdale's are already offering shoppers free Wi-Fi and digital receipts. "The brands have also added live chats to their online shopping sites, allowing customer service representatives to provide real-time assistance to customers."

Also, "Macys.com has launched a new denim fit finder for women powered by fit personalization software. The function allows online shoppers to select a pair of jeans among all of the denim brands offered by Macys.com using a three-step process based on a customer's body type and style preferences." Now, that's convenient!

Advertising and Facial Recognition Software

Targeted marketing is nothing new. Advertisers always want the most bang for their buck, so gathering information about consumers has been a crucial part of figuring out an effective strategy to get us to spend on a specific product or type of product. "Loyalty programs" that reward shoppers with points or discounted prices on goods and services are probably the most common way to find out who's buying what. Every time you swipe your card at the grocery or drug store, you're not just getting lower prices on your merchandise, you're handing over valuable information to the companies that track your spending. Assuming you filled out the identifying information on your card application honestly, there's a goldmine there: not just what you buy, but where you live, how old you are, maybe even your income bracket. And that information is offered voluntarily buy consumers. What about information that's gathered without consumer knowledge? And what if that information is based on your facial features that identify your sex and your age range? Or even you as an individual?

Facebook had to calm irate users a few months ago when it introduced facial recognition software that could automatically identify friends when you uploaded photos of them onto the social network. People complained about fears of invasion of privacy -- a frequent issue that Facebook has had to address and a rather odd situation considering most users volunteer a huge amount of personal data that can be harvested by the applications they allow to access their profiles. Surely you've noticed that the ads you see are affected by your posts and links, even if you are resolutely app-free.

But how will facial recognition software be used for advertising in a retail setting? From the recent LA Times article by Shan Li and David Sarno: "Picture this: You stop in front of a digital advertising display at a mall and suddenly an ad pops up touting makeup, followed by one for shoes and then one for butter pecan ice cream. It seems to know you're a woman in your late 20s and, in fact, it does. When you looked at the display, it scanned your facial features and tailored its messages to you."

This is not just conjecture about the future; the application is already at work in some locations and companies like Kraft Foods Inc. and Adidas are exploring its use in kiosks, vending machines, and on digital signs. Even trendy bars in Chicago are using it to keep the male/female customer ratio in balance and in a designated age range.

Naturally, privacy advocates are concerned about misuse of the software, for example if individuals are identified and the information is used by insurance companies or the government (some police and national security agencies already use it with mixed results). "What if the government starts compiling a database of everyone who shows up to protests?" asked Marc Rotenberg, executive director of [the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center]. "There are so many 1st Amendment and human rights concerns. It's a slippery slope."

And yet, most companies just want to use facial recognition to sell us stuff. Will it work? Perhaps. But there's one interesting twist that's come up. In a popular YouTube video, "HP Computers Are Racist," two retail employees test the facial recognition software in their store computer and discover that it recognizes and follows the white employee but not the black one. The black employee jokingly says that this is proof that HP computers are racist. But I happen to know of more than one black person who would observe that this must be the first time that a surveillance technology has been designed that excludes them based on their appearance!

Are you concerned about the use of facial recognition technology that targets ads to you?

Feeling Pressure from Technology

Just a couple of weeks ago, nobler souls than I celebrated the second annual National Day of Unplugging during which they disconnected from all technology for a twenty-four hour period. The idea comes from a group called Sabbath Manifesto, who advocate unplugging for one day each week. They're not anti-technology; in fact, they're on Facebook and Twitter. They even have an app to help you detach. Their admirable purpose is simply to get us "to slow down our lives in an increasingly hectic world" and reconnect with other people on a more personal, meaningful level.

A complete voluntary detox from all technology for even a day can seem pretty daunting to most of us who depend on being wired, probably far more than we realize. And yet, one of the common complaints in contemporary society is a feeling of being overwhelmed by technology and its effects. I can barely remember a time when I didn't feel pressure to pay attention to multiple sources of information. In the mists of ancient history, I do recall not having a cell phone, not even having an answering machine. There was no cable television and only a handful networks and local stations. No personal computers meant no Facebook, no e-mail. You couldn't Google something; you had to go to the library and search through reference material. When you got together with someone, you talked, uninterrupted by text messages. I love the benefits that technology brings us, but I do have a certain nostalgia for that unfettered, unpressured feeling I had when I wasn't constantly available or constantly beseiged by information.

And it's not just the unrelenting flow of information resulting from current technology that's an issue. Digital cameras make us feel pressure to capture every moment of our lives. If you've ever been the designated photographer at an important event (even in the pre-digital era), you know that taking pictures can remove you emotionally from the experience; you feel everything second-hand. Now not only does the photographer feel that way, but the subject can have his experience and memory of the moment replaced immediately by a digital image. Dave Pell wrote on Tweetage Wasteland about the impact of this in a post called "We All Have Photographic Memories:"

"For his third birthday, my son had a surf-themed party at a way too cold beach in San Francisco. I’m sure he had created a self-image of how he looked in his rash-guard and shades as he balanced on a freshly waxed, beach-bound longboard. Like most parents, I felt compelled to go paparazzi on my son and his friends from the second we unloaded the car. And because he is a child of the digital age, my son followed nearly every snap of the camera with the same request: 'Can I see the picture?' The instant my son looked at the image, his imagination-driven perception of himself was replaced by a digital reproduction of the moment he had just experienced.

"During a presentation on happiness at the Ted Conference, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman makes a distinction between the experiencing self and the remembering self. Digital photography gives additional dominance to the remembering self. At his birthday party on the beach, my son almost leapfrogged over his realtime experience. He was no longer imagining what he looked like on that surf board. He was looking at what he looked like. The wave of emotions, senses and reactions that made up his initial experience were swept away by the undertow of a single sense: what his eyes saw on a two inch viewfinder."

I love the benefits of digital cameras, but what happens to us when we don't savor our experiences because we're so busy documenting them and reviewing the documentation that the experience itself gets lost? What happens when we barely get to create our memories in our minds before they're created digitally, then often distributed to friends and "friends" before the moment has fully passed?

NPR's "All Tech Considered" picked up another fine post by Dave Pell, this one about the effect of creating our very public images online, something we're pressured to do to participate in social media networking: For Sale On the Web: You! And, yes, we are selling ourselves:

"I need you to know how full my inbox is, how great my marriage is, and what an awesome workout I had this morning.

"Friend Me. Follow me. RT me. Like me. @ Me. Poke me. Forward me. Buy. Buy. Buy.

"The age of subtlety is dead. So we all push the product nonstop and the product is us."

And then, he points out, we check the stats to see if we've made the sale. How many comments did we get, or re-Tweets, or "likes?" Did we build our "brand?" To be always on, always selling is a lot of pressure.

How does pressure from this technological overload affect us as consumers? Online pressure directed at our public selves can make us feel insecure or competitive, perhaps like we need something more to make our images appear as successful as we'd like to be, so we acquire more stuff.  Pressure just to keep up with technology itself can make us feel unsatisfied and that makes us vulnerable to wanting to acquire stuff to make us feel better -- sometimes more technology. Pressure to be wired and fully informed can cause us to spend more time attempting to do that rather than doing other things that are more important and more satisfying, like connecting on a personal level with our family and friends -- or making and keeping our lives uncluttered.

I definitely feel the pressure and the sense of being overwhelmed that many of us share, but overall, I like spending much of my time online and I like all of the benefits technology gives us. And yet, more often than I'd like to admit, the availability of technology in my life hasn't always necessarily resulted in the best use of my time. Like now, when I've avoided uncluttering some stacks of papers by writing this blog post.

Did I feel pressure to write something? Of course. Did it contribute to the task at hand: uncluttering my my life? Unfortunately, no. Did I enjoy writing it? Absolutely!

© 2011 Cynthia Friedlob

Related Post: Consuming Time: Kids and Adults Overwhelmed by Technology

Consuming Time: Kids and Adults Overwhelmed by Technology

I can think of few people who don't suffer from some kind of problem with effective use of their time but the issue is especially pronounced among those of us who are regularly online. As much as I enjoy the benefits that technology offers, I know that the Internet can be a giant, if fascinating, technological time sink. Anyone who has a smart phone has added techno-pressure to stay connected. This burden of constant connectivity has created a hot topic of conversation, resulting in an effort to convince people to unplug for at least a short period to take a break and reconnect with their real world.

We usually think of consumer behavior as decisions we make about buying stuff, but we also consume time itself. (I prefer the concept of "consuming" rather than "spending" time. We take in entertainment and information and that process consumes our time, too. I never use the expression "killing time" - what an appalling way of thinking!) I feel an acute shortage of time almost every day and I can blame much of that on my use of the Internet. While it's necessary for me to be online for some portion of the day, I'm just as easily seduced as anyone else by interesting links that lead to other interesting links and on and on.

It's difficult for adults to handle time management in relationship to technology, but it's harder for kids even though, and perhaps because, they're technologically more sophisticated than many of their elders. But I hope your children, if you have any, are in better shape than the subjects interviewed for the article "Growing Up Digital; Wired for Distraction" because there are concerns beyond the obvious distractions technology can provide:

". . . computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.


"Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.

"'Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,' said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: 'The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.'"

One intelligent boy with a low GPA who was mentioned in the article "plays video games 10 hours a week. He regularly sends Facebook status updates at 2 a.m., even on school nights, and has such a reputation for distributing links to videos that his best friend calls him a 'YouTube bully.'" A 14 year old girl "sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month [emphasis mine], her fingers clicking at a blistering pace as she carries on as many as seven text conversations at a time. She texts between classes, at the moment soccer practice ends, while being driven to and from school and, often, while studying." A 14 year old boy, "an introvert, plays six hours of video games on weekdays and more on weekends, leaving homework to be done in the bathroom before school."

A quote from another boy offered insight that reflects on adult behavior, too:

"'Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway.' He concludes: 'My attention span is getting worse.'"

The Washington Post reported the following results of a poll:

"Youth are spending more time with every form of media than ever, according to a report released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. They spend more hours on the computer, in front of television, playing video games, texting and listening to music than an adult spends full-time at work. According to the study, children ages 8 to 18 are now spending more than 53 hours a week (7:38 hours/day) using entertainment media. Ten years ago, that figure was 43 hours a week."

Of course, every generation for decades has lamented the potential to waste time offered by technological advances from radio to motion pictures to television. And perhaps to some extent they were right; it has always been easy to waste time listening to or watching entertainment on those media, but computers are different. Knowing how to use them has become a crucial skill that kids must master. Parents once might have been able to restrict their children's exposure to television, but computers are often required for homework, are used in many classrooms, and can be the key to future employment. They can't be ignored. And parental restrictions weren't working too well anyway ten years ago if that Washington Post poll is any indication -- 43 hours a week is still a huge amount of time devoted to entertainment media.

It's not just kids who are affected by ever-present technology. Steve Holt commented on Technorati's Soapbox Musings about its effects on adults:

"We keep pads of paper beside the bed to write down everything before we forget it. We look for more things to help us organize and prioritize our 'information,' to help us store it, sort it, filter it, and keep it safe. Because, after all, bad things will happen if we don't, right? What eventually happens is that we are bombarded with so much information, and so many choices, that we can't process everything. So we do the only thing we can do... we shut down, or more specifically, our brains shut down. We no longer spend time thinking critically and processing things. We stay 'shallow' with everything and everyone we come in contact with, and we wonder why we can't remember anything anymore."

Ron Geraci reported at Reader's Digest.com:

"'Technology is allowing us to do things we've never been able to do, and it's positively incredible,' says Edward M. Hallowell, MD, author of CrazyBusy. 'The downsides are that it's addictive and you can become tied to it in ways that are exhausting.'


"There's little evidence that the rapid pace of technological innovation has made life markedly more enjoyable. In fact, it may be doing the opposite. Consider a 2007 survey by the American Psychological Association (APA), which found that 48 percent of Americans feel their lives have become more stressful in the past five years. Then consider that all our electronic communication hasn't slowed the raging flood of snail mail, memos, books, magazines and other print matter that most people read to keep up on the job. No wonder that more than a third of those surveyed by the APA said a major factor feeding their stress was work encroaching on personal time."

Clearly there's a balance that we need to find that allows us to reap the benefits of technology without losing ourselves to our computers and gadgets. The Reader's Digest article also offered several suggestions to help us regain control, including setting limits on how and when we're accessible; sticking to a schedule for everything from answering e-mails, texts, and phone calls to recreational Internet use; and recognizing that there's no such thing as multi-tasking on anything that "takes dedicated brainpower to perform optimally." Easier said than done, I fear.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by technology? Have you tried a plan to find that balance in your life? How's it working out for you? And how's it working for your kids?

I'll check for any comments later. Right now I have to update my Facebook status . . . .

© 2011 Cynthia Friedlob