I also wasted too much time, thousands of hours, reading and writing on the newsgroups and on the web.
There are similarities between these 2 things. For example, both reduce the amount of motivation and drive available in a life. But they feel very different, and in my experience, avoiding the former is extremely important whereas avoiding the latter is merely one more important thing in a life full of important considerations.
In an ideal world, there would be a word or short phrase for the second thing so that "addiction" could be reserved for the first thing. "Insufficient vigilance against superstimuli" is the shortest phrase I can think of right now. (I'm sad that I cannot use the word "vices" without provoking an immediate negative reaction: "vices" is shorter than "superstimuli".)