Everything online is evolving quickly, but not randomly. Every online game, social network and entertainment site is involved in fierce competition to make its offerings more distracting, more compelling, more addictive.

Those sites that fail to become more distracting than their competitors go out of business, and the most distracting thrive and grow.

Human nature remains the same. The boredom of school remains the same. But the addictive quality of online entertainment grows every day. This represents a great, underappreciated challenge for children, parents and society.

Even texting is addictive. Millions of U.S. teenagers and children sleep with their phones near their heads, just in case someone texts them at 3 a.m. Kids are often woken up several times a night to reply to texts, and that disrupts their sleep patterns and causes academic, behavioral, health and psychological problems from lack of sleep.

Phone obsession is pandemic. But the trend is driving the addictive behaviors that can be formed via a cellphone to ever younger children.