screenshot. screenshot. screenshot

Occasionally, my phone issues a storage warning that feels oddly personal, as if the device has been observing your choices and has finally decided to intervene. 

Mine did this recently. 

When I followed its gentle scolding and opened my camera roll, I found not photographs but a catalogue of abandoned intentions = 14k screenshots (14597 to be precise). Each one with a small promise I have no recollection of making.

Scrolling through them was like reading a biography written by someone with great confidence but limited access to facts. 

Then I checked my YouTube Watch Later playlist. 2,347 videos. The oldest one was from 2019. A lecture on behavioral economics I'll definitely watch "when I have time."

According to this archive, I am a man who wakes early, cooks nourishing broths, maintains eight investment strategies, reads widely, journals sincerely, and stretches dutifully before bed. 

A well-rounded, luminous human being.

My actual life suggests otherwise.

Of course, the camera roll was only the beginning. 

A brief wander into the other corners of my digital life revealed an entire ecosystem of deferred ambition. 

Saved posts, bookmarked articles, and a quietly growing colony of reels waiting on Instagram, untouched since the moment of their rescue. 

Together they formed a biography I did not remember authoring.

We're all doing this.

Saving everything.

Opening nothing.

I started digging into why this happens.

Turns out there's actual neuroscience behind it.

When you click "Save" on an Instagram post, your brain releases dopamine. The same chemical that fires when you actually accomplish something.

Research on dopamine neurons shows they fire for reward-predictive stimuli. Translation: your brain rewards you for the anticipation of learning something, not for actually learning it.

You save that article about time management. Your brain goes: "Great! We're becoming more productive!"

Except you're not.

You just clicked a button.

The data is...

Instagram users generate 19.79 saves per post on average.

But how many do they actually open?
The platforms won't say.

Pocket, the "read it later" app, processed 703 million saved articles in 2020 alone.
The app shut down in July 2025.
Same pattern?

Browser bookmarks?
People maintain an average of 200 bookmarks, with power users hoarding 1,400 to 18,000 links.

Academic research titled "Out of sight and out of mind" found these bookmarks are overwhelmingly "created but not used."

We're collecting instead of consuming.

the screenshot graveyard in your camera roll

Screenshots are even worse.

A 2023 study found screenshots make up 7% of users' photo libraries. That's roughly 470 screenshots per person.

75% of these screenshots are only relevant for a short time. Yet we never delete them.

The India angle makes this worse.

29% of Indians run out of phone storage at least once per week. Another 62% face storage crises every three months.

This forces 77% to delete files monthly. And here's the tragedy: 65% later regret deleting photos and videos.

We're in a constant loop.
Screenshot everything.
Run out of space.
Panic delete. Regret it.

The average Indian takes 31 photos and 14 videos weekly.
Many still use 16-32GB phones. The math doesn't work.

I asked my cousin why she has 6,000 screenshots.

"I might need them later," she said.

When was the last time you actually searched your screenshots folder?

The psychological term for this is the "planning fallacy."

Kahneman and Tversky's research shows humans systematically underestimate how long tasks take. A study of Canadian taxpayers found they mailed tax forms one week later than predicted, even though they accurately remembered being late the previous year.

We keep making the same mistake.

Present-you saves a 4-hour coding tutorial. You imagine future-you will have 4 free hours and the discipline to watch it.

Future-you saves another tutorial instead.

Research shows intentions explain only 18-23% of actual behavior. There's a massive gap between what we plan to do and what we actually do.

This gap widens with choice overload.

Remember Sheena Iyengar's famous jam study? When shoppers saw 24 jam varieties, only 3% bought. With 6 varieties, 30% bought.

Your saved folder with 500 articles works like that 24-jam display. Too many options. Zero action.

The EdTech sector proves this isn't just about social media.

India's EdTech market is worth $5.13 billion, projected to hit $30 billion by 2031.

Yet less than 25% of students complete courses they start on digital learning platforms.

Globally? MOOC completion rates average just 3.1%.

Udemy reports 70% of enrolled students never even start their purchased courses.

India has 13.6 million Coursera learners, the second-largest market globally. Completion rates? 4-15%.

BYJU'S claimed 85% annual retention before entering insolvency with a collapsed $22 billion valuation in 2024-2025.

This isn't a business problem. It's a behavioral one.

We're buying courses the same way we save Instagram posts. It feels productive. Actually doing the work? That's different.

every unfinished item is draining your brain

The cognitive cost is real.

Research on 801 Chinese college students found digital hoarding predicts cognitive failures: attention lapses, memory problems, and errors.

The mechanism? Every saved article, unwatched video, and unpurchased course is an "open loop" in your brain.

The Zeigarnik effect shows unfinished tasks occupy working memory until resolved. Your brain keeps checking these items, fragmenting your attention.

This mental strain reduces productivity by up to 40%.

Plus there's the illusion of learning.

Without active engagement, you forget 50% of information within one hour, 70% within 24 hours, and 90% within one week.

Simply saving educational content creates false confidence while producing zero actual learning.

Research comparing print vs digital reading found students score higher on comprehension tests with paper because digital environments promote "shallowing." We approach saved content with mindsets suited to casual scrolling.

You're not building knowledge. You're building anxiety.

The cultural angle explains why this hits Indians particularly hard.

Research on scarcity mindset shows material deprivation focuses attention on immediate needs while activating "future-oriented mindsets due to fear of being unprepared."

Hoarding becomes the coping mechanism.

This transmits across generations. People who lived through the Great Depression developed persistent hoarding decades later. In India, previous generations experienced partition, famines, and economic instability.

Studies show strong correlation between physical and digital hoarding (r=.55). Your parents saved gold, property, and expired medicines. You save screenshots, courses, and Instagram posts.

Same psychology. Different medium.

Digital storage removed all physical constraints. You can save infinitely without running out of shelf space. Until your phone says "Storage Full" and you're deleting vacation photos to keep memes you'll never look at.

491 million YouTube users in India. 536 million WhatsApp users. All generating and saving content at unprecedented scale.

We're the first generation conducting this experiment. It's not going well.

I tried something different last month.

"Use it in 48 hours or delete it" rule for everything I save.

Saved an article? I have 48 hours to read it. After that, it gets deleted automatically. No exceptions.

The first week was brutal. I kept thinking "But what if I need this later?"

Then I realized: I never went back to check what I'd deleted. If I couldn't remember it existed, it wasn't useful.

The research backs this up.

Implementation intentions (specific if-then plans) produce medium-to-large effects on goal achievement (d=.65).

Translation: "I'll read this later" doesn't work. "I'll read this Tuesday at 7 PM" does.

I also declared "screenshot bankruptcy." Deleted everything older than 30 days. 4,000 screenshots gone.

You know how many I missed? Zero.

Cognitive behavioral therapy for hoarding shows 22% average improvement in severity scores. It works. But you have to acknowledge the problem first.

My saved folder isn't a library. It's a graveyard of abandoned intentions.

The dopamine hit of clicking "Save" will always feel good. That's biology.

The question is whether you're willing to design systems that force action instead of just collection.

Hit reply and tell me: How many items are in your saved folder right now?

I read every email.

Until next week,
Ritesh