I ask this question because you can turn your telly off but I bet if any one can stay on a pc without going on the internet for a day. That is the level of our addiction.

When you now factor in our affinity for facebook, youtube, chat forums, dating websites, newsrooms, twitter and mobile access to the internet whereever we are via our smartphones (even in our sleep) the scale of our addiction becomes evident. I once told a Director of IT (an African Lady) that I did not have a smart phone and her first reaction was to say "Jesus Wept".

One may "innocently" log onto the net for a quick browsing session and then your curiosity gets the better of you when you see links stating for example "pope benedict to resign" or "World Biggest Crocodile Is Dead And Ready For Funeral" or "Fox drags 4 week old baby from cot and bites his finger off" and then an initial 5 minute plan turns into hours of jumping from one link to the next reading news that practically is "Much ado about Nothing".

Before the whole world had access to the internet, the above news links existed but as they were not in your face, they remained buried in the archives and we were able to save some time for "possibly" more productive pursuits.

Is the internet better suited to people who have an online business since they are "at work" whenever they log onto the net ?

I know that jobseekers, students, researchers, politicians and businesses with an online presence/ambition NEED the internet as do most people in todays 21st Century but the amount of TIME WASTED on reading unnecessary news and information on the net is COLLOSAL that a rethink of our browsing habits is necessary if our productivity is to return.

I know the lies and greed of the Casino Bankers coupled with household addiction to debt was principally responsible for the Credit Crunch and Global Recession but 5 years on we are still in that recession and there is now talk of it being a Triple Dip Recession (in my opinion it is and was not a Recession but an Economic Depression) and the world leaders don't have a clue as to how to dig the world out of the economic coma it currently is in.

But could the drastically reduced productivity of 7 billion inhabitants of the world as a result of unproductive internet use be a major cause of this unyielding Global Economic Depression ?

With so much unnecessary news, vulgar news, bad news and timewasting news at the click of a mouse, I believe the world is fast losing so much of the collective productivity of 7 billion people.

I believe that online collaboration is good but when such collaboration opens the floodgate to waste and drain productive time on unnecessary and addictive "tittle tattle" then such collaboration should be watched carefully.

In my opinion, since the Good, Bad and Ugly information from EVERY country in the world is available at the click of a mouse, there is a tendency for a lot of unnecessary information to be assimilated by the brain leading to "information overload" and a subtle or not so subtle reduction in focus and overall productivity on the short and long run.

OR Has the internet so Re-Wired our brains that the addiction to the internet is now permanent and the best we can do is to manage our addiction and either live with the reduced productivity it brings or be brutal and severely restrict your visits to time wasting websites ??