I wouldn't say I'm addicted to them, but when I find myself bored, I open a meme site (which shall remain unnamed) and just look at mildly popular memes. Doesn't matter what they're about. I just like the occasional laugh I get out of them. I also like social topics being turned into dark, twisted humor which is sometimes captured perfectly in memes.

But when I was going through a rough patch of my life (depression, suicidal tendencies), I would doom scroll said website every free second I could. I just didn't have anything in my life that gave me joy, apart from dark, twisted memes. I'm doing much better now and even though I am an extreme introvert with social anxiety, I find that I have replaced my time that I would spend on that site with time I spend with my colleagues. I still don't have friends, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every once in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I would just keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will make my day a bit more bearable.

Just my experience though. IMO, generally speaking, people are spending more and more time on the internet because the products, or rather the content factories, have become so good at capturing and keeping our attention on them, that in comparison the real world seems bleek and bland.

EDIT: Fixed some grammar. English not native language