How Atlantans are recovering from digital addiction

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Every other Thursday night, Maddie (using only her first name, in keeping with the program’s anonymity) heads to the Atlanta Triangle Club for a 12-step recovery program called Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous , known as ITAA. There, Maddie and more than a dozen assistants share their daily struggles with internet addiction disorder. “For so long I avoided saying it, but I was an internet addict who couldn’t stop,” says Maddie. “I need the scholarship to keep me consistent in my recovery and honest with myself.”

As today’s information age increases our reliance on digital technology, Internet Addiction Disorder, a broad addiction that includes gaming, online shopping, pornography, binge-watching, and excessive research , has become a serious problem; research suggests that 5 to 10 percent of Americans qualify as Internet addicts. The disorder is still being studied, but people struggling with the problem turned to the 12-step model, established by Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s, to build a peer-based recovery system for Internet addicts. ITAA launched in 2017 with a few groups worldwide; has grown rapidly since then and now has thousands of members, with more than 130 weekly online and in-person meetings held in seven different languages.

Maddie, who is 28 years old and a native of Atlanta, started playing video games in elementary school. During high school, it became part of her social night life, and when she was at a local college, she spent a minimum of 14 hours a day online. “I wasn’t an adult functioning at that rate, and I still didn’t think I had a problem,” he says. “The technology is so normalized in engineering or ‘nerd’ circles that no one around me questioned it.” He started missing classes and suspended several.

Cat (also just her first name), in her mid-30s, is from Gwinnett and attends ITAA meetings on Thursdays. The cat’s internet habit started as research for his health and wellness business, but during the pandemic, that habit turned into listening to podcasts and scrolling on his phone and laptop for up to 12 hours a day . “I didn’t think it was a bad thing to be in learning, especially during the pandemic,” explains Cat. But over time, she says, “I stopped taking care of myself and my problem became compulsive.”

Both Maddie and Cat got their lives back together through therapy and ITAA. Maddie also attended a treatment center in Seattle, where she practiced abstinence and developed offline hobbies. The treatment center also gave her time to reflect on her gender identity; she now identifies as a transgender woman. Today, he uses technology two hours a day and has returned to school to finish his degree. Cat’s therapist warned of Internet addiction, and Cat found an ITAA online meeting, where she met another person struggling with compulsive learning. He now limits his internet use to three and a half hours a day and uses a lightweight phone, whose capabilities are limited to calls, texts, GPS and music.

Both Maddie and Cat have been attending ITAA Atlanta since 2022. Cat says the program attracts all types of people with Internet Addiction Disorder, from young teens to people in their 80s. “Technology is ubiquitous in life at this point,” he says. “You don’t have to be an extreme case to be in a trouble spot.”

This article appears in our September 2024 issue.

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