How did we get addict to the Internet?

There are different sites out there in the Internet that actually attract people. These sites can be briefly categorized as follow:

Online Presence of Established Companies: e.g. IBM, Microsoft, CNN, Citibank
Keyword: What do the company online sites offer?

Common Interest Interaction: e.g. product reviews, forum, IRC
Keyword: What do others think about XYZ?

Online Tools: e.g search engine, online news, directories
Keyword: Where do I find XYZ?

Resource Sharing: e.g music & video sharing, pirated software
Keyword: Where do I download XYZ?

This is the full evolution cycle of an Internet addict.

Let’s think about how a typical web surfer learns about the Internet. Everybody starts with Online Helping Tools such as Yahoo. At this stage, the main focus is to find why Internet is so interesting. Once this person justifies the fun of surfing, he will start to look for sites that match his interest. At this stage, his radar of known sites will expand to Common Interest Interaction sites. The typical symptoms are long hours of surfing and unable to concentrate on activities outside the Net. This period is typically 1-3 months. He may switch to different interest during that period rapidly. He quickly realizes that he can get many things free of charge, regardless of legal issues. He starts to dive into Resource Sharing sites. The most notable symptom at this stage is 24-hour broadband connection with endless network activity and buying hard disk or optical storage media once a week. This stage is the longest of all and most people continue to do so for years. The last stage is the final stage of evolution. He starts to realize that the Internet is very useful not only to kill leisure time but offer helps on his work/study. He starts to link Internet to his daily life as much as possible. Without Internet connection at home or at work, he starts to feel he is unable to complete anything successfully.

Oops! He is addicted!