It started with the Nintendo 64.
Lauren remembers obsessively playing a ’90s game console when she was 8 years old, and how it took precedence over making friends and doing her homework. At the time, she says, it was the family’s home computer. The use of technology continued to dominate her life, she says. She almost didn’t graduate from high school because she was late, absent, and missed assignments.
“I was so confused because I knew I was an impulsive person,” Lauren says. “I knew I had ambitions and goals in my life, so I was very confused as to why I just seemed to keep blowing away at things that were important to me.”
At the time, Lauren didn’t know what the problem was. She says she knows that now. Her addiction to the internet and technology continued to plague her as an adult, and eventually led her to consider suicide.
At the height of her addiction, Lauren says she would sometimes scroll for hours on end. She didn’t take care of the apartment, so it was infested with fleas. She didn’t take care of herself either. She put off eating, drinking water, and going to the bathroom. she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t get out of bed. She said life was unbearable.
“It felt like a living nightmare,” Lauren says. “I felt like I had no quality of life. I was miserable all the time and couldn’t explain to people why I was so unhappy.”
Now, Lauren is on the road to recovery, thanks to a new, little-known 12-step program called Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous (ITAA). Borrowing from the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, ITAA hosts regular meetings and encourages members to follow the 12 steps outlined by AA to achieve sobriety. Like other members of ITAA, Lauren does not reveal her last name when speaking about the group to the media, respecting the main principle of anonymity.
According to Lauren, one of the biggest challenges in controlling her addiction was recognizing it in the first place. If she had realized how to use the Internet properly sooner, she might have saved herself many years of suffering.
“I didn’t realize that I was suffering from an actual addiction,” Lauren says. “I thought maybe I had an anxiety disorder or maybe I had depression. But none of that seemed to really explain what I was going through. It was just waking up every morning. I had a plan for the day and a goal I wanted to achieve. But in reality, it wasn’t up to me. It was always up to my addiction.”
“It’s like heroin to me.”
ITAA was formed in 2017 by a group of people who realized that the use of the internet and technology was getting out of hand, according to the group’s website. Since then, its membership has increased. Currently, ITAA is holding weekly Zoom and in-person support meetings.
About 45 people, ranging in age from college students to retirees, attended the virtual conference in November, which was open to journalists and others. They came from all over the country and around the world. Like AA, they celebrate milestones and many have sponsors.
ITAA’s goal is not to avoid the Internet or technology completely. In today’s society, that’s not realistic. Instead, members identify and eliminate their “bottom line,” or specific websites or devices to which they become addicted.
One member named Tom says the irony of internet addicts meeting on Zoom isn’t lost on him. (“We’re like alcoholics who meet at a bar,” he jokes in an interview with USA TODAY.) Still, he finds the meetings extremely helpful. Thanks to ITAA, he has stopped using the internet compulsively for four months. Getting there wasn’t easy.
There is a rule not to mention specific names of revenue during meetings. But when people start sharing their stories, some always fall through the cracks. Instagram. Google. Fan fiction. Porn. For Tom, that means video games, YouTube, and smartphones.
At my worst, I was using technology for up to 20 hours straight. Like Lauren, he says he had suicidal thoughts due to his addiction.
“It doesn’t really work like a behavioral addiction,” he says. “It acts more like a drug addiction, so it’s kind of like a drug. It’s like heroin to me.”
For Lauren, Reddit, YouTube, and social media have a similar effect.
“I was using screens compulsively for the same reasons other kids turned to substances,” she says. “There was a lot of abuse and trauma in my family of origin, so I used the internet, video games, and television compulsively to try to cope with and escape the challenges I was facing.”
“The phone is a syringe”
Dr. Timothy Fung, an addiction psychiatrist at UCLA, says it’s unclear how widespread internet and technology addiction really is. Part of the reason, he says, is that these addictions are often overshadowed by other addictions that may be influencing them. For example, a compulsive online gambler may be treated for gambling addiction alone. People who are addicted to Internet porn may only be diagnosed with hypersexuality.
As a result, Fung said, “there is simply no scope to determine the scope of the problem.” But it’s clear, he says, that the internet can prove highly addictive for some people, “as if the phone were a syringe.”
“One patient told me, ‘My goal is to get to the end of the Internet,'” Fong says. “He literally said, ‘I want to see every web page created.’ And we were imagining this endless loop that would never be filled. And it was like, ‘I want every drug on the planet.'”
Fong says it’s important to evaluate your internet and technology usage. Is your sleep affected? What is your relationship? What about your mental health?
Before ITAA, Lauren took drastic steps to curb her addiction, but to no avail. She locked her device. She wrote herself a letter begging him to stop.
Since finding ITAA, she says she has been in recovery for three years and finally achieved sobriety.
“Now that I’m in recovery, I understand that I can use computers, I can use the Internet and technology in ways that really help my life and my recovery from addiction,” she says. “There’s no reason to avoid computers. I’m able to use them in a way that supports my life.”
