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Social networks and blogs accounted for less than 9% of all UK time spent online three years ago, but this figure has rocketed to 23% in the latest study.

The UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) report also highlights how Britons are spending 65% more time online generally than they did in 2007.

The study reveals that the biggest casualty in the growth of social media is instant messaging (IM), made popular by MSN and AOL, use of which has decreased by 66% in the past three years.

However, websites including Yahoo! and MSN still recorded a 10 per cent increase in time spent on their sites since 2007.

Online games and email also showed a significant usage increase, with Britons spending 15% and 11% of their online time on each respectively.

UKOM's Alex Burmaster said: 'Despite the large increase in the amount of time people spend online and the increasing proliferation of websites and online services, one thing has remained constant, and that is the bulk of time accounted for by communicating, networking and playing games. These are the pillars on which the internet as a heavily used medium are built.'

Separately, while more marketing and communications professionals than last year are embracing social media channels for UK brands, the 2010 McCann Erickson Social Media Index, published today (Wednesday 19 May), shows that many agencies and consultants are not providing enough guidance to their clients on social media.

Almost half of those surveyed (48%) said they still do not feel they have adequate knowledge on how best to use social media channels effectively for marketing purposes.

Although this is down from 64% last year, the figure is still surprisingly high.

Nearly a quarter of respondents (23%) also admitted that advances in social media are difficult to keep up with, and almost the same proportion (22%) said they would like to understand social media more but genuine experts were hard to find.

The McCann survey also found a marked increase in general social media usage for communications activities.

Twitter had the most increased usage (up 28% since 2009), with 61% of those surveyed saying the microblog is regularly used to distribute news stories.