Do you ever feel jittery, demotivated, or even lost? If so, think about asking yourself how many browser tabs are open right now.
Recent research was conducted by Aalto University students in Finland on the causes, effects, and various coping mechanisms of what they refer to as "browsing clutter" (opens in new tab). They asked more than a dozen people who spent more than 10 hours a week online and 400 participants in a survey about their browsing patterns and attitudes as the tabs piled up.
What then qualifies as clutter? There are typically more than a dozen tabs open at once for the majority of participants, who typically have 1-3 windows open with 5–10 tabs apiece. According to more than 50% of study participants, browser clutter is a serious problem.
Those who think having too many open tabs is an issue indicated it made them feel stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated, and demotivated. And if that weren't bad enough, several claimed that the visual overload made it harder to navigate through information, increased levels of distraction, and impaired work effectiveness.
There are various tactics you may employ to set some boundaries against clutter if you're finding it difficult to traverse a plethora of open windows and tabs. Use browser add-ons like Session Buddy, which enable you to group tabs into collections for later use. Some people have tight rules about how many tabs they can have open at once. Another helpful strategy is to develop better "tab closing habits" by making sure to shut all tabs and windows at the end of the day rather than minimizing them, which can result in "tab hoarding."
This problem won't go away unless web browsers are fundamentally changed to handle tab clutter. The only real solution if you're experiencing "Too Many Tabs" blues is to actively alter your surfing habits. To that end, good luck! For your information, I had roughly 13 tabs open when I was writing this article. But I won't reveal how many windows there are. That is not your concern.