You're trying to log in. You've tried three passwords. The site is now asking for a password reset. You check your email, click the link, create a new password. "Password cannot be the same as your last 5 passwords." You stare at the screen.
The average person has somewhere between 70 and 100 online accounts. Each one wants a unique password. Many have different requirements: eight characters minimum, one uppercase, one number, one special character, but not that special character.
Password management has become a part-time job that nobody asked for and nobody wants.
The Problem People Keep Running Into
Human memory isn't built for this. Remembering dozens of complex, unique strings of characters goes against how our brains work. We evolved to remember faces, places, and stories, not "J7$kP2!mNq4."
So people cope by reusing passwords, using simple variations, or writing them down in insecure places. Security experts call these behaviors dangerous. But they're also completely understandable responses to an impossible demand.
The result is a constant cycle: forget password, reset password, create new password, forget that password too. Each site becomes a fresh opportunity to start this process again.
How Modern Systems Created This
Passwords worked fine when you had three of them. The problem is scale:
Everything moved online. Banking, shopping, utilities, healthcare, entertainment, work, socialall became digital services requiring accounts. The number of logins exploded without any coordinated solution.
Every site built its own system. No universal identity standard emerged. Instead, every business created its own login, with its own rules, its own storage, and its own vulnerability to breaches.
Security requirements escalated. As hacking became more sophisticated, password requirements became more demanding. What was once "6 characters" became "12 characters with mixed case, numbers, and symbols, changed every 90 days."
Breaches made reuse dangerous. When one site gets hacked, attackers try those passwords everywhere else. The security advice became "never reuse passwords," which sounds sensible until you have 100 accounts.
Why It Keeps Getting Worse
New services mean new accounts. Every startup, every app, every digital product creates another credential to manage. The growth shows no signs of slowing.
Two-factor authentication, while more secure, added another layer of complexity. Now you need the password plus your phone, plus sometimes a backup code, plus sometimes a security question you set five years ago and forgot.
Password managers help but introduce their own problems. Now you need to remember one master password, trust a company with all your credentials, ensure the manager works across all your devices, and hope it doesn't get breached itself.
Biometrics promised to help but became additions rather than replacements. Face ID and fingerprints work for your phone, but most websites still want passwords underneath.
How People Cope Today
Most people have developed personal systems of varying effectiveness. Some use the same base password with site-specific variations. Others let their browser save everything and hope for the best. A growing number use password managers, accepting the trade-offs.
The "forgot password" flow has become the actual login process for many. Rather than trying to remember, people just reset every time. The password becomes a temporary token rather than a remembered secret.
Some services are moving toward passwordless authentication, using email links or phone verification instead. This reduces the memory burden but creates new dependencies on having access to your email or phone.
The password problem illustrates a broader issue with digital security: the burden falls entirely on users. Every company can add requirements, but nobody coordinates to make the total load manageable. Until there's a real alternative to passwords that works everywhere, we're stuck remembering the unrememberable.