Consumer’s fixation with social networking has helped contribute to a 65 per cent rise in the amount of time Britons spend online.

According to figures released by UK Online Measurement (UKOM), the average British surfer spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month. The way in which Britons spend their time online has changed dramatically since it was last investigated in 2007.

Content generation sites are becoming increasingly popular, with the most heavily used area of the internet being social networking websites. The use of sites such as Facebook and Bebo, now accounts for nearly a quarter of user’s time online.

Despite the popularity of social networking, the amount of time spent sending emails has also increased, albeit slightly, rising from 6.5 per cent in 2007 to 7.2 per cent.

One casualty of the social networking expansion is instant messaging (IM). At present, just 5 per cent of time online is spent using IM, compared to 14 per cent three years ago.

There has been a steady increase in the amount of time spent on auction and classified ad websites and online news providers have seen a growth from 1.7 to 2.8 per cent.

Alex Burmaster, a spokesman for UKOM maintained that networking, games and communication are the three most popular activities online.

“These are the pillars on which the internet are built,” he told the BBC.  Burmaster believes the rise of social networking is down to its organic nature.”

“People are plugging more and more of their lives into it,” he continued. “It is like an organism, feeding off itself and getting bigger.”