Diagraphephobia



Diagraphephobia (also known as Delephobia and Cyberdispophobia) is the fear of deletion, deleting files or data loss (such as via deletion, accidental deletion, files getting deleted by siblings, ransomware, overwrite, factory reset, and hard drive getting eaten by a dinosaur). It is also the term of the fear of being erased from existence, usually by believing that you are living inside a video game or computer simulation, and being afraid that you are going to get deleted from existence. Summed up, this phobia applies to the fear of having your important documents, photos, or other files deleted or living as a file, photo or a document inside a computer and getting deleted yourself. This phobia may be developed as a side effect of Disposophobia, as research indicates there may be correlation between individuals who exhibit Disposophobia and Diagraphephobia and acknowledges there is a lack of psychological literature on the subject.

Some people with Diagrephephobia can't delete any minor file including cache files. Some people with this phobia could delete files if a backup exists. This is also known to cause digital hoarding, which isn’t necessarily as bad as real life hording, but the term “digital hoarder” is sometimes used to describe people without Diagraphephobia who download lots of data as a hobby with the goal as archiving. Most diagrephephobes do not do this.

Diagraphephobes might also hoard physical electronic devices (or only electronic storage media, like cellphones).

Most people with Diagraphephobia display intense anxiety and fear when asked to delete old and unwanted/unnecessary files. They might show following signs of anxiety/panic attacks with symptoms of restlessness, rapid breathing and heartrate, screaming, running away or hiding rather than deleting the files, getting extremely distressed, and becoming nauseated at the thought of deleting files. Some People with diagraphephobia have trouble organizing digital data manually.

Specific subsets of data affected by subcategories of this phobia this phobia are usually is photos and emails, but may extend to documents, contacts, bookmarks, browsing history, and all other data.

Unlike dipsophobia, there are no safety or health risks caused by diagraphephobia except tab hoarding, which causes computers to overheat and create burns.

Causes
The phobia is usually caused by a past traumatic experience related to data loss, usually caused by losing game saves, photos & videos, or other data on a tablet by late Gen Z or all of Gen Alpha or losing game saves on a console for early Gen Z and all Millennials. This can slowly cause the sufferer to contract diagraphephobia and fear deletion of data on all electronic devices. If left unchecked, the sufferer may gain Dispophobia. Another cause is emotional attachment to digital assets.

Note about r/datahoarder
Most members of the r/datahoarder subreddit do not suffer this fear. The subreddit is about archiving large amounts of data as a hobby, and not about people with this phobia.

Treatment
People with mild diagraphephobia is often treated using talk therapy and other psychiatric interventions. Severe sufferers are often treated using anti-obsession medication, as well as cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Origin
Although this fear possibly originated shortly after computers originated, the name for the phobia was coined by Urban Dictionary Bloopy on August 27, 2009 as being primarily the fear of the fear of being removed from existence (getting deleted), and secondarly being the fear of losing data.