Do you feel that online addiction, or Facebook addiction, is a real thing?

Certainly, the internet, facebook can be addictive. You may have noticed Chris Pirillo being slightly addicted to Empire Avenue and the internet can turn from a fun game, a tool to get information to somewhere where their outside life is so meaningless that they feel the need to live in the virtual world.

Of course, Chris has a life outside of Emprie Avenue and the internet, while he choose to live stream from his office and communicate with people from across the world he's creating healthy interactions.

Humans are creatures of habit and facebook is a habit forming service like it or not.

"Sarah comes home from work, has a cup of tea and goes on facebook. She then spends 1 or 2 hours catching up with her friends, tending to her virtual farm and using Facebook chat" This is fine.

The addiction kicks in when she does these things and then spends 3H every night, maybe it's her whole evening on facebook and maybe she works in an office where she can get to facebook or perhaps on the way home she checks it on her phone and maybe, just maybe she goes round a friends house and uses their computer to check facebook.

When something starts to take over your life and have a detrimental impact on another aspect, whether it's health, friendships, human relationships or work then it's an addiction. If you become scared of leaving your computer, angry or depressed when not on the website, have a short temper from lack of site interaction, get sad when you can't use it and spend time away from it thinking about it then it's an addiction.

You may call these people sad, pathetic, losers and throw rocks at them, but they need help. Please help them to overcome their addiction because without real human interaction their lives are sad.