Press Gazette reports that the amount of time spent reading news online has risen from seven million hours per months to twenty-two million hours (or roughly thirty-minutes per person) a month over the last three years. The data was compiled by the UK Online Measurement Company based on tracking a sample of 40,000 internet users throughout the UK.
The complete UKOM breakdown of time spent online ranked by proportion of the total (With percentage change over last three years):

• 1. Social networks.blogs: 22.7 per cent, up 159 per cent
• 2. Email: 7.2 per cent, up 11 per cent.
• 3. Games: 6.9 per cent, up 15 per cent.
• 4. Instant messaging: 4.9 per cent, down 66 per cent.
• 5. Classified/auctions: 4.7 per cent, down six per cent.
• 6. Portals: 4 per cent, down 10 per cent.
• 7. Search: 4 per cent, down 3 per cent.
• 8. Software info/products: 3.4 per cent, down 36 per cent.
• 9. News: 2.8 per cent, up 84 per cent.
• 10. Adult: 2.7 per cent, down 3 per cent.

In an interview with the BBC, Alex Burmaster, a spokesman for UKOM, said that the general rise in usage was "...It is like an organism, feeding off itself and getting bigger. People are plugging more and more of their lives into it." Mr. Burmaster also noted that it is somewhat of a myth that "everyone online visits adult sites."

It should be noted that this significant increase in online readership does not necessarily correlate with increased revenue. This problem has given rise to the great paywall debate currently raging across the globe. In a recent BBC Radio 4 debate, The Guardian's Alan Rusbridger remarked that rushing to introduce paywalls may cause the industry to "sleepwalk into oblivion". On the other side of the fence is of course Rupert Murdoch. In addition to his already paywalled Wall Street Journal, Murdoch will soon begin charging for online access to The Times and The Sunday Times. Sunday Times editor John Witherow optimistically describes this as a "a hugely significant moment for the paper."

Sources: PressGazette, BBC News, BBC Radio 4