Survey: More watch and surf at the same time

Americans are finding new ways to watch entertainment and news, with people now simultaneously watching TV and surfing the Internet, according to Nielsen's latest study of viewing habits.

People surfed the Internet while looking at TV on average about 3 hours, 30 minutes in December, substantially more than the 2 hours, 40 minutes of simultaneous viewing in June, the company said.

The Nielsen Co. says it has found that people change their Internet habits while they watch TV. "We won't watch two videos at the same time, but we will social network," said Matt O'Grady, a Nielsen product leader who researches cross-platform viewing.

The five most popular Web sites for Internet users when they are not watching TV are Google, YouTube, Yahoo, MSN, and Facebook, O'Grady said.

When someone was simultaneously viewing the Internet and television, YouTube fell to fifth and Facebook rose to third. YouTube is the Internet's most popular online video site.

Other findings in the survey show that the typical American watches 35 hours of TV and 22 minutes of online video per week.

Mobile video - or video watched on a smart phone - holds a small share of the video market.

Nielsen says traditional TV viewing rose only 1 percent between 2008 and 2009.