2 - Addiction, Our Children, Our Bonds

Summary

I met Seth, a 23-year-old man, at a meditation retreat in Connecticut. Seth called himself “a recovering tech-addict.” It started in high school, he told me, when he spent a lot of time playing online games. But it was in college when things got out of control. For nearly three years, he said he was “a slave to information from the Internet.” He spent eight hours a day on Reddit. Reddit users can submit news items and vote them up or down. When enough users give a submission up-votes, the item will make it to the site’s front page. Sam told me it was a vicious cycle. He felt isolated in college and used Reddit to fill his time. But then the more he used Reddit, the more isolated he became. He could not stay off Reddit and barely studied. Eventually, the college placed him on academic probation, and he knew then that he had to quit. In our conversation, he used AA lingo. “I have been two years clean,” he said. Seth explained that he now religiously limits the time and type of his online activities, but he is always worried about relapsing.