ADDICTED TO THE INTERNET

A shocking international report recently showed that South Africans spend more time online than anyone else. Many of us habitually check our WhatsApp or refresh Facebook, but at what point does it become a life-changing problem?

- MIRANDA LEVY

IT'S 7.45 on a Tuesday evening and members of Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous are logging on for a regular meeting. Some 30 faces fill the screen: from Oxford to Baltimore, Vancouver to Tel Aviv. If there's any irony to people who deem themselves internet addicts getting together on Zoom, no one remarks upon it.

"My brain is thinking it's a very good idea to start using again," says Dave*.

"I'm okay with the first video, then I'm up till 4am watching films I hate, then I have to work the next day."

Juliette" says, "I put loads of items in the basket and fantasise about checking out. My ego is very insecure right now."

Andy*, who works in IT, tells the group how jealous he is of the gardener he watches through his home-office window. "He gets to work without tech. What a wonderful life that must be, no screens or temptation."

Much of the talk at Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous (ITAA) is about being clean, relapsing and being "internet sober". Group members say the Serenity Prayer and refer to their Higher Power. It's the language of Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in the 1930s, imported to tackle a 21st-century "poison".

According to ITAA, internet and technology addiction comprises: "addiction to social media, smartphones, streaming video or audio content, games, news, pornography, dating apps, online research, online shopping or any other digital activity that becomes compulsive and problematic". Members of the free international "fellowship" programme have diagnosed themselves and most came across ITAA while scrolling.

But what is the difference, you may ask, between the average person who looks at emails first thing in the morning and last thing at night, who endlessly scrolls Twitter and news apps as a matter of habit, who likes an after-work Netflix binge- and an "internet addict"?

Aren't we all addicts in the uber-connected 2020s?