Digital Clutter: The Average American Has This Many Unread Emails and Texts — How Do You Compare?

While many people are familiar with how disorganized or messy physical spaces can impact things like productivity, anxiety, and stress levels, the modern world has introduced a new space where clutter can have similar impacts: your digital life.

Things like unread notifications and messages as well as unused apps, files, and old media such as photos and videos can take up space on devices like smartphones and computers, impacting device performance and making it harder to find items that users actually need.

To find out how pervasive and intrusive digital clutter is for the average person, All About Cookies surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults. We found how many unread messages and notifications the average person has, how many people feel that digital clutter has a noticeable negative impact on their lives, and more.

Key Findings

• The average person has over 1,000 unread emails.
• A digital disaster: 77% of people feel digital clutter negatively impacts their life.
• 50% of people say they get frustrated because digital clutter makes it difficult to find apps and files they need.
• Nearly one-third of people (31%) have paid to upgrade a device to one with more storage because of digital clutter.

How much clutter do people deal with every day?

Digital hoarding comes in many forms — from old and unused files and apps taking up space on devices, to things like unwelcome and distracting push notifications. One of the less impactful but more common forms is unread messages and notifications.

We asked survey respondents to tell us how many unread texts, emails, and more they currently have on their digital devices, as well as letting us know how many texts, social media notifications, and push notifications they receive on average every single day.

The average person has 12 unread text messages waiting for them, and more than 1,000 unread emails in their inbox. Additionally, people have 17 unread social media notifications on average while also having 15 different browser tabs open.

The number of new messages and notifications that people receive can be a reason that old ones go unread, creating a backlog that can feel overwhelming. The average person receives 17 new text messages per day, and around the same number of social media and push notifications, receiving 18 of each every single day.

Notably, only 4% of people say they don’t receive at least one new text message in an average day, while the same is true for just 19% of people when it comes to social media notifications and 30% for push notifications. That means that the majority of people are receiving new messages and notifications every day, most likely multiple times a day.

That volume of messages and notifications — both new and old — can make it difficult for users to decide what to focus on, while also making it more likely that something important goes unseen in the mass of notifications vying for their attention.

The impacts of digital clutter

Knowing what digital clutter looks like for the average person, we wanted to explore how it impacts users’ lives, particularly how many people have had digital clutter hamper things like their general productivity or device performance.

More than three-quarters of respondents (77%) said that digital clutter negatively affects their lives in some way. The most common impact is to device performance, with nearly 40% saying that their phones, computers, or tablets have slowed down or crashed because of digital clutter.

Around one in three (31%) said that their productivity has taken a hit before because of a disorganized digital space, and more than a quarter said that digital clutter increases their stress levels (28%) or slows down their internet speed (27%).

Unused files, apps, and other digital detritus take up storage on the device housing them, which means there’s less space available for the things that users actually want and need to keep on that device. This can lead to users running out of usable storage space, something that more than half of people (53%) say has happened on their phones. Around a quarter of people have run out of email inbox storage (24%) and computer storage (23%), while a fifth have run out of space on a tablet.

Running up against a storage limit can prevent devices from performing optimally, and also lead users to use their wallets to try and solve the problem. More than half of people (52%) say they haven’t been able to install a software update on a device because they did not have enough storage space, something that can not only impact performance but also have security implications.

When it comes to how people increase their storage capacity, more than one-third (36%) have paid for additional storage such as buying space in the cloud to save files and data, while nearly one in three (31%) have been frustrated enough by their lack of free space that they paid to upgrade their device to one with greater storage capacity.

How often digital clutter causes frustration

Finally, we wanted to see how often people find themselves frustrated or annoyed by their excessive digital footprint.

We found that half of people, an even 50%, get frustrated because digital clutter hampers their ability to quickly find a file or app they want at least once a month. That includes 16% who run into these kinds of issues at least once a week, and more than one out of every 10 people (12%) who experience frustration caused by digital clutter every single day.

Tips for keeping your clutter manageable

• Clear your cookies. Cookies can slow down your browser. No matter what device or browser you use, you can clear unwanted cookies to keep clutter manageable and speed up your browsing.
• Unsubscribe from unwanted emails. Most unread emails are spam and promotional material. Declutter your inbox by unsubscribing from old/unwanted email lists.
• Protect yourself from spam calls and texts. Spam calls and texts can cause unnecessary clutter on your phone. Hide your number from these spam messages to clear more clutter.

Methodology

All About Cookies surveyed 1,000 Americans on the amount of digital clutter they have as well as their feelings on how said clutter affects them. Responses were collected via a survey platform. Survey conducted in December 2024.