according to research by Nielsen Co.
The time spent on social media accessed from PCs rose from 15.8% in June 2009 to 22.7% in June 2010, according to Nielsen, while online gaming gained more modestly to 10.2% of online time from 9.3% a year earlier. But that was enough to push gaming past e-mail, which fell to 8.3% of online time spent at the PC from 10.5% a year earlier.
separating social-media time from gaming time has become tougher, given that a growing portion of online gaming takes place via Facebook applications such as Zynga's Farmville, Nielsen analyst Dave Martin acknowledged.
. The shift of e-mail use from PCs to mobile devices accounts for some of the decline of time spent on e-mail at PCs
online video time still only averaged an hour and 15 minutes per person per month, an amount of time many people spend with traditional TV on the morning of the first day of the month
Instant messaging also lost share of time at the PC, Mr. Martin said, which was likely a result of increased use of mobile texting in part.
a small proportion of internet users were classed as internet addicts and that people in this group were more likely to be depressed than non-addicted users.
The mean age of the 18 internet addicts, 13 of whom were male and five female, was 18.3 years.