Intellectual ADD?

I feel like I'm developing a form of attention deficit disorder (ADD). I prefer whipping through short snappy internet articles to slowly working though a novel. Sometimes, I'll even rather read a short BBC News article than a long New York Times magazine article. I'd rather read about sports than about the latest physics news. Sometimes I prefer to email people than to talk to them (but maybe that depends on my mood and their level of busyness).

Am I becoming mentally lazy? Is the internet contributing to my short attention span? I notice that I didn't watch too much TV as a child and I still don't. Is the internet the newest form of intellectual corruption? It seems like I'm learning about interesting things, but really I'm just accumulating fleeting tidbits of trivia. Is it really important that I know what are the latest models of ultracompact digital cameras (virtual window shopping), the last week's scores in the NFL (I'm not even a football fan), or the top 10 grossing movies of all time? I feel like I have control over what I choose to read, but isn't the internet worse than TV if I choose to read junk where as on (free, non-cable) TV there is a limited selection of programming? I have found some consistently outstanding content on the web, but I also waste a lot of time doing all encompassing searches on people (stalking) or topics (what are the latest rumors about Battlestar Galactica?).

I do resist in some ways. I still listen to music by album and not by playlist (no random shuffle for me!) I still watch movies and epic season-arcing TV series as opposed to stand-alone TV episodes.

I'm trying harder to stop reading junk on the net. I only save links to sites that are really good. I have several tiers of links: things I should read everyday (news, science), technical links that I don't look at frequently, and links to fun stuff and hobbies. I'm trying to subscribe to world news on my RSS reader, so I don't always gravitate to the sports, health, education, and technology sections of the New York Times in favor of politics, foreign affairs, and economics.