Now there is even a name for this kind of behavior when you spend endless hours in a trance scrolling through pictures after pictures or exchanging meaningless conversation or clicking here and there opening hundreds of browser tabs. This is called “flow.”
This is fully analyzed in the article “Online flow experience, problematic Internet use and Internet procrastination,” by Andrew Thatcher, etc, carried on Computer in Human Behavior journal, vol24, issue5, 9/2008, 2236-54.
Flow is defined as “a total absorption in the work at hand.” Procrastination is to avoid doing what one should do. The irony is flow becomes a tool for a procrastinator to avoid doing his/her work.
We want people to be in a flow state when they are doing what they should do, like fully occupied in their work, but if people use flow to avoid doing their work, they set themselves up for the life of a loser.