Social networking: Americans' most popular online activity

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on August 3, 2010 at 5:31 PM

On average, U.S. Internet users spend almost 25 percent of their time online using social networking sites and blogs, a 16 percent growth from the same time last year, according to the latest Nielsen research.

Facebook is the main reason this activity is growing, the Los Angeles Times reported. Of all social networking use, Facebook took 85 percent, while News Corp.-owned MySpace was next, with just 5 percent. Twitter claimed a 1 percent share.

Compared to social networking, e-mail accounted for 8.3 percent of online time, down from 11.5 percent at the same time last year, Reuters reported.

"When you're on Facebook, you can do instant messaging, you can email and share content," said Nielsen analyst David Martin, according to Reuters. "Maybe an assumption is that social networks are directly displacing some of these traditional channels for communication online."

Playing video games was another activity on the rise, up 10 percent, to take up an average of 10.2 percent of time spent online. Online video watching increased by 12 percent, to about 3.9 percent, according to the New York Times News Service. Meanwhile, time spent on Web portals, like Google and Yahoo, were down by 19 percent from last year, to 4.4 percent.

As about 40 percent of U.S. online time is taken up by just three activities - playing games, e-mail and social networking - other sectors are "fighting for a declining share of the online pie," Martin stated in a press release.