"At age six, Sarah Hill was handed her first iPad by her parents, which she used to play games like Angry Birds and Minecraft whenever she was bored. By age 21, the Alabama native had fallen so deep into virtual reality experiences and playing video games that she'd stopped seeing friends, showering, and brushing her teeth. 'If you compare video game and tech addiction to drugs,' she says, 'VR is the meth of drugs.'"
"Hill's parents flew with her from Alabama to a town just outside of Seattle and enrolled her at reSTART, one of the nation's few residential treatment programs for digital overuse that treats tech addiction as a danger on the scale of alcohol or drug addiction."
"'I remember the night I told my parents I'd lied about everything and I flunked,' she recalls. 'My parents didn't have any words. They were like, 'Just go.' I went to my room, but the last thing I saw was my mom resting her elbows on the counter and just crying. That was the worst thing I ever saw.'"
Tech addiction is a growing concern, with individuals like Sarah Hill experiencing severe consequences from excessive use of technology. Hill's journey illustrates the detrimental effects of virtual reality and gaming on her social life and personal hygiene. Despite some skepticism about the existence of tech addiction, increasing legal cases against tech companies suggest a rising awareness of its dangers. Programs like reSTART aim to address these issues, highlighting the need for recognition and treatment of tech-related dependencies.
Read at Fortune
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