A multitude of near-identical wedding guest dress options. A butter bean salad recipe that some healthier, more organised and optimised version of me might one day eat for lunch. A now-outdated meme about the papal conclave. A Hinge profile so monumentally dispiriting that it needed to be recorded for sociological purposes (the “fun fact” related to his previous job… in a morgue). So, so many QR codes. These are just a few highlights of the digital junk collecting dust in the screenshot folder on my phone.
Since getting a smartphone about a decade ago, I’ve become an inveterate screenshotter. Seen something that I might want to buy, at some distant point in the future, if I suddenly undergo a drastic change of financial circumstances? My thumb and forefinger spring to either side of my phone, ready to capture it. Spotted a hairstyle, a recipe or weird exercise that future me might try? A news story that might one day spark some groundbreaking idea? The self-help podcast episode that might change my life, but I can’t quite be bothered to listen to right now? Might as well hoard it away, just in case, like an optimistic squirrel burying nuts for winter.
And so while some people can track their whims and moods by looking back at what they’ve typed out in their Notes app, I can do something similar by looking back at this particular sub-folder. At least my Notes app has some semblance of order, filled with shopping lists and the books I’ve read. My screenshots follow zero logic; flicking through them feels a bit like taking part in some weird cognitive test. A bus timetable sits next to a Gemma Collins quote, which in turn sits next to an advert for a pilates and breathwork retreat. No wonder I’m constantly running out of cloud space. And this collection of pictures feels weirdly personal, too – you could probably glean a lot about the sort of person I’d like to be from analysing all the stuff I’ve filed away under “just in case”. More organised. More assertive. Better dressed. Curator of a home filled with expensive abstract vases.
A glance at my photo app reveals that I am currently clinging to just under 2,000 screenshots, compared to around 6,000 actual photos. That’s a ratio of around one screenshot for every three proper pictures. When you put it like that, it’s more than a little bit depressing (it certainly doesn’t say anything good about my screen time, either). The earliest one dates back to 2018: for some reason, it’s a scene from the end of the film Call Me by Your Name, where Timothée Chalamet cries as the credits roll. What value is this grainy picture of a sobbing Timmy adding to my life? Absolutely nothing. And in the time I’ve been hanging on to this objectively pointless collection of pixels, Chalamet’s CMBYN co-star Armie Hammer has been “cancelled” and attempted to mount a comeback.
My screenshot back catalogues soon force me to confront another big question. Why have I stored up so many memes relating to the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber? It’s not like I’m going to have to deliver a musical theatre-themed stand-up set any time soon. Beyond the jokes, though, I do find some more personal mementos, like a simple screengrab of a Facebook message from my then-teenage sister, which must have amused me at the time, back in 2019. “Can u quit ur job and we book a great holiday?” it says. Its bluntness makes me laugh now; who among us can honestly say they’ve never wanted to do this? I’ve got plenty of other silly exchanges like this stored away in screenshot form, even though the conversations still exist elsewhere.
Of course, we don’t just screenshot the chats that make us smile; many of us are also guilty of keeping our friends abreast of any unfolding drama by sending dispatches from various WhatsApp groups, so we can get a second opinion (does that full stop look really abrupt to you?) or just receive some commiserations. I’ve lost count of the out-of-context sneak peeks into various hen do chats that I’ve received over the years, complete with outlandish demands and spiralling budgets. It’s not exactly good digital etiquette, but there is something instantly cathartic about flinging a snippet from a particularly bonkers exchange over to a trusted pal, and asking them to sense check it.
And then there are the digital sleuths, who screenshot every potentially rogue Instagram story, dubious comment or embarrassing LinkedIn post as if they’re assembling a dossier. I don’t condone this, because life is too short and everyone’s a bit cringe on social media, but if you have a friend who’s a gossip demon, you might just find their posts also clogging up your camera roll. All of which only adds to the chaos.
Screenshots also feel like little notes from your past self
There is, inevitably, a name for this phenomenon, because I’m not the only person drowning in their digital ephemera. Psychologists have come to refer to this behaviour as digital hoarding, a label that feels particularly confronting because it summons up images of dusty rooms overflowing with boxes and boxes of old stuff. According to academics at UCLA, it is simply “a new version of an old psychological challenge” – essentially, technology has given us new ways to cling to the past, and just because we can’t see photos or files piling up in our homes doesn’t mean that they’re completely harmless.
Because this pattern of behaviour is a relatively recent one, there hasn’t been a whole lot of research delving into it, but the handful that do exist don’t paint a great picture. Digital hoarding has been linked to increased anxiety and stress levels, and one study has suggested that it might be more common among people with maladaptive perfectionist tendencies (essentially, those who are prone to high levels of self-criticism and set themselves impossibly high standards). I feel personally attacked. If I’d come across this information during a social media scroll, I’d probably have screenshotted it for posterity (only to inevitably never look at it again).
Despite this, it’s not a habit that I want to quit entirely. Because, yes, while I could probably stand to divest from a fair few hundred of these files, screenshots also feel like little notes from your past self. They’re reminders of what you were obsessing over back then, what was important to you, or even what was annoying you. I don’t need every single train ticket QR code I’ve used over the past 24 months, but I am glad that I’ve preserved stupid jokes or special messages in a sort of digital amber. From now on, though, I’m imposing a strict rule: for every new image I create, one of them has to go.
