What about *ACCEPTABLE* addictions?
How about *READING* "addiction": spending your "down" time reading books? Or the aforementioned Television "addiction"? Or, even worse, our "addiction" to work - 40+ hours a week in behavior that has been "proven" to be as detrimental to our health as alcohol abuse?
I guess it all comes down to what one group of people consider "balanced" behavior versus another group. Is reading books every evening instead of watching television for an "addictive" amount of time considered abnormal? Is working at a skill you really enjoy - and often getting paid for it - considered an "addiction"?
Usually an "addiction" is defined as a behavior that adversely affects your life; that is, a behavior that causes physiological, psychological or financial damage to you and your family or close associates. "Traditional" addictions like alcohol, drugs or gambling have clearly identifiable symptoms and consequences. However, "substitution" of one behavior for another that does NOT have adverse life impacts, or at least no worse than the replaced "acceptable" behavior, shouldn't qualify as an addiction - unless they start having the same impact to your life as one of the "traditional" addictive behaviors.
So substituting computer or technology use for time that would be spent reading, watching television, playing chess, watching a movie are NOT addiction: they are simply "life-style choices" that technology makes available today.
And the real biggie - work "addiction" - is actually encouraged, as it decreases the cost of productivity...at the expense of both quality of life and physiological health.
Tell you what: I won't consider it an "addiction" until the police set up checkpoints for "excessive work behavior" late at night and haul me off to a Caribbean resort until I "learn my lesson" and pay my leisure debt to Society...