Americans Spent 53 Billion Minutes on Facebook in May: Study

Facebook has apparently become an even bigger time suck for Americans.

A study released Monday by Nielsen revealed that Internet users in the U.S. spent a total of 53 billion minutes on Facebook in May 2011 -- more than any other website.

That's up 6 percent from 50.6 billion minutes a year earlier.

Coming in at No. 2 was Blogger (723.8 million minutes), followed by Tumblr (623.5 million), which nearly tripled its audience from a year ago; Twitter (565.2 million;) and LinkedIn (325.7 million).

Overall, Nielsen found that Americans spend 22.5 percent of their Internet time using social media, compared to 9.8 percent for online games and 7.6 percent for e-mail.

Facebook was by far the most popular social media site, with 70 percent of Americans who use the Internet on the site.

Nielsen's study, called State of the Media: The Social Media Report, examined "trends and consumption patterns across social media platforms in the U.S. and other major markets, exploring the rising influence of social media on consumer behavior."

Other findings:

-- Nearly 40 percent of people who use social media access the content from their cell phones.

-- People over the age of 55 are the major drivers of social networking growth.

-- Seventy percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, which is 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user.