I find it maddening too, but hey, it’s her phone. It’s only maddening in a “I wouldn’t personally do it that way” sense, so I don’t sweat it.
My wife even does it more extremely: when she opens a web site, she opens it in another tab, even if she already has that web site in an existing tab. So she ends up with hundreds of Facebook tabs, hundreds of shopping tabs at the same store, thousands overall. I don’t think she has ever deliberately closed a tab, and might not even know how. Safari’s UI makes it totally non-obvious how to do it, like how Apple makes it non-obvious how to kill apps.
This is essentially what I do as well (modulus Facebook). Sure, if I happen to see the open tab I need, I’ll switch to it. But you only see about a handful of tabs at the same time so it’s easier to just open a new one. I don’t see the value of going through and tending to my old tabs at all.
My wife even does it more extremely: when she opens a web site, she opens it in another tab, even if she already has that web site in an existing tab. So she ends up with hundreds of Facebook tabs, hundreds of shopping tabs at the same store, thousands overall. I don’t think she has ever deliberately closed a tab, and might not even know how. Safari’s UI makes it totally non-obvious how to do it, like how Apple makes it non-obvious how to kill apps.