People on the web spend almost half their time accessing content such as music and video.

That's according to a new study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA), which reveals that the share of time spent communicating online has shrunk by 28 per cent to 33 per cent since 2003.

Of course, employees accessing content at work will always be something of a security worry, as downloading can be dangerous. It is important that organisations have IT support in place to help when things go wrong.

OPA's president, Pam Horan, commented: "The dominant role of content is driven by several important factors. The first is the online transition of traditionally offline activities, such as getting news, finding entertainment information or checking the weather.

"Quality content sites see a consistent pattern - major news drives traffic spikes, but traffic remains consistently higher even after the event.

"Major news events … are clearly driving consumers to engage more deeply with online content."