The average American spends a third of their overall time online playing games and using social networks.

The average American spends almost a third of their time on the Internet playing games and using social networks, according to a new survey by Nielsen. Social networking sites and services take up the largest chunk of time, at about 23 percent of all time spent online, and that figure is up sharply from just 16 percent in June 2009. Online games account for the next largest block at 10 percent, up from 9 percent in the previous survey.