Americans Addicted to Social Media

Editors' Note: A previous version of this report incorrectly stated the usage statistics in time per hour. The survey actually tracked units in time per hour of online usage.

Your intention might be to hop online to quickly update your status or tweet your latest life revelation, but social media is addictive and a major time consumer.

A new survey from consumer and business credit reporting company Experian found Americans spend on average, 16 minutes of every hour spent online on social networking sites.

The study shows that Americans spend the most time on social media sites than any other country, with U.K. users spending 13 minutes of each online hour on these sites and Australians spending 14 minutes per online hour on average.

Ari Zoldan, president and CEO of Quantum Media Holdings, says the numbers aren’t shocking, citing mobile usage taking social media addiction to the next level.

“It’s a total time zap. If you think about it, we don’t go anywhere without our mobile phones, we’re always connected with social media," Zoldan says.

And apparently talking about ourselves and living in infamy on social media is more interesting to users than news and even celebrities. The survey found Americans are also spending more time on these sites than they do on entertainment sites (nine minutes an online hour), online shopping (five minutes an online hour) and porn (three minutes an online hour).

“Social media has brought us even more into the ‘Me’ generation,” Zoldan says. “We are totally ego-centric. Do people really care that I just checked into some museum?... I have people taking photos of their steak dinners. Who cares? It’s all me, me, me.”