They are using as much memory as they can because it is available. Chrome is notorious for this. That is not a valid gauge for how much memory is necessary or even useful.

How about the system freezing? Vscode compiling a flutter project with an Android Emulator open. Firefox with MS Teams, Jura etc, no tab hoarding. Sometimes chrome is open as well. Upgraded to 32gb and the freezes are gone.

16gb is not enough anymore for even such a modest workload.

Electron is never modest. It's an incredible resource hog. Memory has become too cheap, people should think instead of just waste resources. The next generations will need to use an abacus again if this stupidity goes on.