Report: Games Account for 10% of Online Time, Beat Out Email, Instant Messaging

Posted 08/05/2010 at 3:40am | by Nathan Grayson

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Who said the Internet is for porn? According to a recent study conducted by the Nielsen Company, nowadays the Internet is predominately used for two things: social networking and gaming.

Unsurprisingly, a whopping 22.7 percent of online time is spent on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which actually sounds like a bit of a conservative estimate to us, seeing as the magic of cell phone technology means that – for us, at least – Facebook is always only one five-second stretch of boredom away.

Online games, meanwhile, snagged a silver medal in the time-devouring contest with 10.2 percent, catapulting them ahead of email's 8.3 percent.

Interesting stuff, huh? What we're wondering, though, is how long it'll be before all our web activities are rolled into one writhing, Katamari-like conglomerate. After all, tools like Facebook are already replacing email, and games like Farmville encourage you to bug your buddies until they embark on an addiction-based journey of equal parts self-loathing and rural discovery, all so you can have your crops fertilized one time. It's a big loop. Games are becoming more social, and social networks are becoming more game-like. Meanwhile, everything else that Nielsen listed – instant messaging, email, videos, etc. – is getting gobbled up by social media's giant, unhinged jaw.

And that's just the present. It's all at once exciting and utterly terrifying to imagine what our media-centric, almost-disturbingly interconnected future holds if things continue at their current pace. Or, you know, you could just read Snow Crash.