Are you an information addict?
goodside: I accept that some people, perhaps even most people, are fully immune to anything like Internet addiction. If you're one of those people, great. I envy you. But I can say from first-hand experience that compulsive Internet use ("Internet addiction" is a casual misnomer at best) is real. Further, I very strongly suspect that low-latency Internet connections, up-to-the-minute news and blogs, and social sharing of content have exacerbated such compulsions by enabling and rewarding rapid-fire consumption and shallow analysis of content.I doubt these inventions are the only cause of Internet compulsion, but they encourage it in people who have pre-existing compulsive tendencies. Analogously, gambling addiction is known to be caused by excessive dopaminergic activity in the brain, but that doesn't change the fact there would be less of it if there were no casinos.Many studies show ( http://bit.ly/deum0v ) that compulsive Internet use responds to the same sorts of medications used to treat OCD, namely SSRI antidepressants. You might want to consider speaking with a doctor if your use is really that severe. For me, they have helped considerably.