Not sure but anyway, 20 years ago it might have been accidentally addicting just because it was new, shiny and interesting. Today it's addicting because some people are employed full-time by large companies to make their products more addicting, and that's part of their OKRs and more ("Engagement" being one such metric that many companies try to increase religiously)
Yes. It might have been addicting too back then but no one I knew of was checking news/social networks 24/7 and was always available online.. because these things did not exist in the way they do today.
You went online to do something specific: play, research something or whatever else and you were not distracted by 500 services fighting for your attention. It was a much healthier way of consuming.
