My Technology Use Feels Out Of Control
Find free meetings, recovery groups and professional help.
Maybe you've deleted the apps a dozen times and reinstalled them a dozen times. Maybe you're up at 3am scrolling, again, hating it, unable to stop. Maybe it's costing you work, sleep, relationships — and the shame of that keeps you scrolling more.
Deleting an app or promising to stop may not be enough. If repeated attempts keep failing, add more structure and ask other people for help.
Read: the full guide to MAA & ITAA — what the fellowships are, and what a meeting is actually like →
What Can Help You Change Compulsive Technology Use
A break can create space, but it may not change what happens after you return. A stronger plan can include clear rules, fewer easy routes to the problem, real activities to do instead and regular support from other people.
Free Support Meetings — Today
Two twelve-step fellowships exist specifically for this, and both hold free online meetings every single day:
Internet & Technology Addicts Anonymous (ITAA) — daily online meetings around the clock and the world. They have specific pages for phone addiction and social media addiction, and a full meeting schedule. You can join anonymously, camera off, just to listen.
Media Addicts Anonymous (MAA) — for compulsive use of all media, including scrolling, streaming, news and entertainment. Free online meetings run every day.
If your use involves gambling, pornography or gaming specifically, there are dedicated fellowships for each — and if you're in crisis or your mental health is at risk, please also talk to a doctor or therapist. Group support and professional help can be used together.
Read: How To Stop Watching Porn When You Feel Stuck — compassionate guidance, something you can do today and direct links to PAA, SAA, SLAA, SA and SMART Recovery.
Free Recovery Meetings For Internet And Media Addiction
Years ago this site invited people to join a "Digital Freedom Club." It turns out the club already exists, it meets every day, and it's free: the rooms of ITAA and MAA, full of people who get it. Walk in (camera off is fine). You'll never have to explain yourself from scratch again.
Use The Free Course Alongside Meetings
The free Freedom Now course gives you the step-by-step structure — accountability, closing open loops, replacing the habit, rewriting the story underneath it. It's free because everyone should have it.
If you want personal help putting a practical plan together, you can also work with Michael directly.
Give Something Back
Everything on this site is free and always will be. If it helped and you'd like to give something back, don't send it to me — send it to the two fellowships that keep people company through this, every single day. Both are free, volunteer-run and live on donations.
The full directory
Everything I know of that is worth knowing about, including the things that compete with what I do. Most of it is free. None of it pays me anything.
If tonight is bad
If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please stop reading and talk to someone now. In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In the UK, call 116 123 for Samaritans, free, any hour. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com will find your country's number.
If it is not that, but the night is still hard — this page was written for exactly that.
Media Addicts Anonymous
Free twelve-step fellowship for media addiction, with online meetings every day and free worksheets on urge surfing, media fasting and activities to do instead. No cost, no signup, first names only.
Internet & Technology Addicts Anonymous
Free recovery material in more than a dozen languages, including a newcomer's guide, a worksheet for defining your own lines and first-hand accounts of withdrawal.
ITAA — Navigating Withdrawals
If you are in the first two weeks and wondering whether what you are feeling is normal, this is the page to read. It is mostly first-hand accounts, which is exactly what helps at that point.
Game Quitters
For gaming specifically. A very active community — tens of thousands of posts in the daily journals — plus a parent support section. Some of it is paid; the community is the valuable part.
reSTART
The first residential treatment programme in the US for internet and gaming addiction, state-licensed and fifteen years old. If this has gone beyond what self-help can reach, this is a real clinical option.
SAMHSA National Helpline (US)
Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in English and Spanish. General substance use and mental health — not screen-specific, but a real human being at three in the morning.
Smartphone Free Childhood
For parents. A pact with more than 150,000 signatures, local groups, and an independent phone-finder tool that takes no money from manufacturers.
Wait Until 8th
A school-based pledge to hold off on a smartphone until the end of eighth grade. The pledge activates once ten families at your child's school have signed, turning an individual decision into a shared one.
Screen Sanity
Free family toolkits, including age-tiered planners, a first-phone comparison chart and a video game decision tree.
Children and Screens
Independent research institute that takes no technology industry funding. Plain-English research summaries and expert Q&As.
When To Choose MAA, ITAA, Game Quitters Or Clinical Help
If you have tried to stop several times and not managed it, start with one free meeting. Media Addicts Anonymous and ITAA run online meetings every day. You can use your first name, say nothing and listen before deciding whether to return.
If it is gaming specifically, Game Quitters understands that particular problem better than the general fellowships do.
If it has cost you a job, a relationship or your health, this may be past the point self-help reaches. reSTART is a real clinical programme with fifteen years behind it, and there is no shame whatsoever in needing that.
If you are worried about your child rather than yourself, the parents page is a better starting point.
If you want to start on your own first, that is fine too. The course here is free, there is no signup, and it will still be here if you decide later that you would rather not do it alone.
Nothing on this site is sponsored, affiliated or paid for. There are no affiliate links, no advertising, no sponsored placements and no tracking. Nobody can pay to appear here or to be described more kindly. There is also no signup: no email address, no account, no cookie banner. If a company on this page later offers me money, this line is how you will know they were turned down. Why it is all free →
Michael has spent much of his working life online—and much of the rest of it trying to stop that technology taking over. He has thrown a phone into a lake, locked devices in boxes and experimented with long periods offline. He writes about what helped, what failed and how to keep the useful parts of digital life.
Directory last updated 9 August 2026. This page is checked and corrected as new research comes out. If you spot something out of date or wrong, tell me and I will fix it.