Nielsen: 10% of online time spent gaming

Americans spend 10 per cent of their time online playing games - second only to the amount of hours they put into social networking.

New figures from Nielsen reveal that gaming is an increasingly major online pursuit, having now leapt ahead of time spent emailing.

In total, online gamers racked up 407 million hours per month, with social networking and blogs constituting 906 million hours.

"Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web," said Nielsen's Dave Martin, "40 per cent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities - social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie."

However, while gaming and social networking were the top named web pursuits, an amorphous "other" constituted 34.3 per cent of time online.