Across the world, millions of youths aged between 11 and 17 engage in the compulsive, unrestrained use of social and streaming platforms, and even more, primarily boys, are at risk of video game addiction. Many teenagers, sometimes barely older than children, spend their days in front of a screen or with a phone constantly in their hands. They do not ask for help, and only with great anxiety do they manage to live outside their invisible circle of relationships. Why do they fear disconnection so much? What are they afraid of losing? Using true stories, the authors provide an account of this increasingly common disorder: the ways in which it is expressed, the individual and environmental factors that facilitate addiction, the warning signs, and strategies for dealing with it.

Maria Pontillo is a cognitive and behavioural psychotherapist and a psychology manager at the Childhood and Adolescence Neuropsychiatry Division of the Bambino Gesù Paediatric Hospital in Rome.

Stefano Vicari teaches Child Neuropsychiatry at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome and heads the Childhood and Adolescence Neuropsychiatry Division of the Bambino Gesù Paediatric Hospital in Rome.