The internet is silting up with ego-driven dross. It's little wonder that the anti-network-neutrality brigade would like to turn it into freeways and side streets, depending on willingness to pay. And, equally, it's no wonder that the network neutrality supporters want everything to stay the same and for the pipes to be fattened ad infinitum.

With limitless capacity and fixed price access, anyone who can afford a few dollars a month is able to promulgate whatever they want out to an unsuspecting world. They could do it with blogs, podcasts, videocasts, social networking sites, Second Life or Twitter.

It doesn't matter that most of the utterances are ignored by most of the world. For most people the joy lies, I suspect, in the uttering. It's like vanity publishing. Everyone has a story and this is a way to get it out.

Most people like making connections and 'friendships'. By participating in a social site like Twitter, they can delude themselves about their connectedness. Enough of the digital glitterati hang out there to make it worth dropping by and picking up what these A-listers are up to. Even if it is as boring as 'stuck in traffic on 101', or whatever.

If we were able to really restrict our appetite for social media consumption to our genuine friends and work colleagues, for example, then we'd probably derive a lot of value from it. I wouldn't mind knowing what my four analyst colleagues at Freeform Dynamics were up to at any time although I really wouldn't welcome a continous stream of the stuff.

And this is the issue really. If you get involved in any big way with blogs, podcasts, videocasts and social sites, it can be like a drug. But this drug doesn't so much mess with your head as mess with your time. "I'll just see what [name your own guru] is up to at the moment" and that's another chunk of your life thrown away, never to be recovered. It's even worse with videos, which are becoming all the rage in Twitterati circles. A bit of puff and a tiny URL and, if you're not careful, you end up watching some nonentity on an ego trip.

I think we ought to start accounting for our time in the same way that lawyers do. And then measure the value extracted from each social media engagement. Did it entertain? Did it educate? Did it inform? Choose your own criteria and monitor your online activity. If you're dissatisfied with the outcome, ask yourself what else you would have spent that time doing. If the answer to that is 'something better' then you have a problem. Only by recognising the consequences of the addiction can you form your strategy for beating it.

PS For social accounting purposes, that probably took you 135 seconds to read.