An addiction is a habit to stimulation. Like TV, Internet is very powerful stimulator - it holds your attention (some times partial, as it described in comment

An addiction is a habit to stimulation. Like TV, Internet is very powerful stimulator - it holds your attention (some times partial, as it described in comment above) and allows you to forget or to push aside any challenges of so-called real world. In fact, it works the same way as an alcohol - cheap and low-pleasant solution for wasting your time. All those tweets, blogs, emails and headlines just keeps you loaded, keeps you away from actual tasks or problems, like a popular radio and then TV shows did. Of course it is much easy and even pleasant to read tens or even hundreds of short, primitive, mostly meaningless posts and comments than to do something useful. In this illusion it seems like you're getting new facts, accumulating knowledge in various areas and it raises your self-esteem, but actually you're just switching channels from one advertisement to another.