Of course, in some cases, what people experience in the on-line world is disquieting or disturbing. But here again, the most constructive response is to use this experience as grist for the mill for thinking about the rest of one's life. It is the existence of the computer on the boundary that causes people to reflect on what they themselves are, how they are like and not like the computer. The term addiction is most usefully saved for experiences with substances like heroin, which are always dangerous, always bad, always something to turn away from. The Internet offers experiences in which people discover things about themselves, good and bad, usually complicated and hard to sort out.
People grow and learn and discover new potential.
People also discover preoccupations and fantasies that they may have never dealt with before and which may be very troubling. If you call the Internet addicting, then you have to call all powerful, evocative experience addicting. I think that many of our anxieties about the Internet are a displacement of other anxieties about the power of technology in our lives. People feel that computers are getting out of control, and they fear they can do nothing about it. Then they seize on the Internet and imagine that this is a place where they can exert control.