It's not a new concept.
Since the days when people used networks of text-menu-driven bulletin boards and dial up modems, certain people have complained about the time spent online by others. The stereotype of the geek in the basement with a bare light bulb and a terminal, excluding himself from normal human contact began in those days.
Before that, was it the ham radio guy with a clackety teletype machine, up all night sending 10 characters per second out into the ether where 100 other stations waited?
Now it is morphed into the "poor internet addict who needs society's help". I suggest that addictions are real, and that some people are more prone to them than others, but I reject the notion that anyone can be addicted to the internet any more than they could be addicted to the telephone, the post office, and the physical library.
It is great to research the causes of addictions, and it is interesting to know why some people spend more time "on the internet" than others, but those whom complain about what other people do with their spare time&money should mind their own business.
What is next? Is it OK to spend an hour researching real knowledge like how a magnetron works or why a tire may explode, but not to spend an hour on something trivial or fun like facebook or a video game? 2 hours? 5 hours??
Life would be even more fun if people would mind their own business, but there's never any money to be made by minding one's own business. There is money to be made by finding out what people like to do and putting a stop to it.
Such studies, perhaps paid for by the government, serve to open the door to more 'classification of behaviors' and from that, intrusions into people's private lives and ways to extract funds from them and from society through monitoring and exertion of increased control.
