defetter
“Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences.” - Wikipedia
Information addiction (IA) is a condition caused by the irresponsible consumption of information, especially compulsively.
It's continuing to scroll through Facebook even though you've definitely seen everything. It's your fingers typing "reddit.com" by themselves when you open a new tab. It's closing Instagram and opening it again right away. It's picking up your phone every five minutes to check for notifications, the constant distraction of anticipating them, and the anxiety you feel when it's not with you. It's the urgency and elation with which you whip it to your face when you hear it chime. It's the "just-one-more" which glues you to YouTube or a bad series for three hours longer than the one video you planned. It's the obsessive need to be finished which kept you playing that Facebook game or shiny app until you'd found every plant, puppy or Pokémon. It's the dark narcissism or insecurity which keeps you checking the gradually-climbing likes on your latest post. It's the impossible-to-ignore itch to look at something interesting and shiny right now which thwarted your last few attempts to read a book. It's that month of soul-numbing grinding you took on "voluntarily" because you "wanted" the shoulderpads with eyeballs on them and 6 more ilvls. It's your twinned abject despair and morbid curiosity as you learn about the day's horrors - political, genocidal, whatever. It's your angst about the state of the world. It's frustration and anxiety and discontent and expectation and fear and just one more and it might be the reason you're so unsatisfied.
It's your magnificent, broad-shouldered soul weeping at its lot, chained to a rat running in circles.
The food-drug metaphor helps here. Eating is a reality of life, as is processing information. You can't avoid either, but they can wreck you if your relationship with them is bad.
Information is, in many ways, more dangerous than food. Choosing to eat requires effort - you have to walk to the kitchen, order food, or go shopping. Information's effortless. There's always a screen nearby.
Food also has an obvious, physical consequence: you feel immediately gross, and in the long run you become obese. Information leaves your mind a wreck, but that goes unnoticed more easily, or is even accepted in a society where it's the norm.
Food is difficult in that it's a physical requirement, which means you must face that demon several times a day. But we rely on information more and more, and we interact with information sources which are increasingly addictive and dangerous.
The ability to recognize when you're being dragged around by your baser instincts by weapons-grade behavioural conditioning is an increasingly important survival skill.
You don't devour another two cakes when you're full. Your diet goes beyond junk food. You can learn to consume information responsibly too.