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Suzy Weiss: Is It Time to Go Internet Sober?
“You can tell yourself you’re just going to watch one more YouTube video before bed—and still find that suddenly it’s dawn,” writes Suzy Weiss. (Illustration by The Free Press)
I went to an Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous meeting. Here’s what I learned.
By Suzy Weiss
09.20.25 — Second Thought
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When Grant Johnson got to college at the age of 18, he realized he had a problem. He wasn’t motivated to study. He wasn’t dating. He wasn’t an athlete. And he was in debt. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, and he had a hunch why.

“My dad and brother got me into playing video games before I can even remember,” Johnson, now 25, told me over the phone. “Growing up, there were times where I’d go online right after I got home from school until I went to bed. When I graduated high school, I would spend upward of 12 hours per day online.”


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Back then, Johnson had two computer monitors. On one, he’d be playing video games like League of Legends, and on the other he’d be watching anime, or something on Netflix, or YouTube videos. At college, he told me, “I didn’t know why I was there . . . I was just wasting my time.”

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Suzy Weiss
Suzy Weiss is a co-founder and reporter for The Free Press. Before that, she worked as a features reporter at the New York Post. There, she covered the internet, culture, dating, dieting, technology, and Gen Z. Her work has also appeared in Tablet, the New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others.
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