There’s more and more reasons to blog — and one of them is a growing number of people devoting most of their online time reading blogs and visiting social networks.

Based on a study conducted by Nielsen, Americans are using 17 percent of their time visiting blogging sites like Blogger and social network sites like Facebook. This was a significant rise from the six percent that was calculated last year.

The Nielsen study also showed that spending for ads on blogging sites and social networks has doubled from last year, with spending amounting to $108 million a month. What’s more significant is that the increase was posted even when ad spend on other industries have decreased.