# Your 87 open tabs are not laziness

> Psychologists say a phone full of open tabs is a memory strategy, not a mess.
- Title: Your 87 open tabs are not laziness · Psychologies | Shortify
- Summary: Psychologists say a phone full of open tabs is a memory strategy, not a mess. Open tabs are external memory. Closing them only works if the information stays…
- Keywords: psychology, memory, digital habits, attention, cognitive load, open, tabs, laziness, Psychologies
- Source: Psychologies — https://psychologies.com/moi/se-connaitre/Vous-gardez-des-dizaines-donglets-ouverts-sur-votre-telephone-Ce-nest-pas-forcement-de-la-desorganisation-ce-reflexe-peut-servir-a-autre-chose-636631
- Author: Nina Parage
- Published: 2026-09-11T13:43:25+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: psychology, memory, digital habits, attention, cognitive load
## Thirty tabs, fifty, a hundred
Keeping a phone stuffed with open tabs gets mocked as digital chaos. Researchers who study online behaviour see something else: each tab works like a small mental sticky note.

> Chaque onglet ouvert agirait comme un petit pense-bête mental.
## The Zeigarnik effect
Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik showed in the 1920s that interrupted tasks stick in memory far better than finished ones. Starting something creates a tension that only ends when you finish it.
## A tab is an unfinished intention
That unresolved tension keeps eating attention in the background. An open tab makes it physical: proof on screen that you meant to do something and have not done it yet.

> Il matérialise une intention inachevée.
## Fear of losing the link
Work around Carnegie Mellon found people keep tabs mostly to avoid hunting for the same information twice. Sunk cost and a FOMO-style aversion to loss make closing one feel like throwing attention away.

> Garder l'onglet ouvert devient alors une façon, illusoire mais rassurante, de garder le contrôle.
## Offloading a full brain
Evan Risko and Sam Gilbert's work on cognitive offloading points to the real cause. Working memory holds only a few things at once, so the screen carries the overflow instead.

> Ce comportement relèverait davantage de la neuroscience que de la paresse.
## Why tidying advice fails
"Just sort and close" asks for the exact decision-making energy the habit is protecting. What works is making information effortless to find again, so closing a tab stops feeling like a loss.

> Ce n'est pas la volonté qui manque, mais un système capable d'absorber ce que leur mémoire ne veut pas lâcher.
## Key takeaway

Open tabs are external memory. Closing them only works if the information stays easy to find somewhere else.