Surfing the Web at work is an increasingly common habit that could be even more addictive than coffee, according to new research into Internet usage in the office.

According to the survey, 93 percent of all employees in the U.S. spend at least some of their time at work accessing the Web, up from 86 percent a year ago, and many of them are logging on for personal reasons.

Among those, 52 percent said they would rather give up their morning caffeine hit than lose their Internet connection.

The average time spent accessing the Internet at work was 12.6 hours per week. But while employees estimated that 3.4 hours of that time was due to non-work related surfing, IT managers put that figure at closer to six hours.

"As the line between professional and personal usage of the Internet becomes more of a gray area, many employees have started to rely on it to complete their job duties as well as perform personal tasks during the work day," said Geoff Haggart of Internet firm Websense, which conducted the survey.

The most popular Web sites accessed were news sites (81 percent), personal email (61 percent), online banking (58 percent), travel (56 percent) and shopping (52 percent).

More men than women -- 62 percent compared with 54 percent -- admitted visiting non-work related Web sites at the office.

Men were 2.3 times more likely to visit sports sites and more than three times as likely to visit investment and stock purchasing sites. Almost a quarter of men also admitted visiting a porn site at work, although only 17 percent said they had done so deliberately.

As well as surfing the Internet, 18 percent of workers said they listened to or watched streaming media and 16 percent said they used instant messaging, although two-thirds of companies said IM usage wasn’t sanctioned.

But while Internet use may be on the rise, it appears that companies have got wise to employees using their office hours to play computer games. Just six percent of workers owned up to playing games, down from 14 percent a year ago.

一项对办公室互联网使用状况的最新研究表明，在工作时间上网逐渐成为上班族们的习惯，这甚至比喝咖啡更容易上瘾。

研究结果表明，全美93%的员工至少将部分工作时间用来上网，这个数字高于一年前的86%。而且他们中有很多人上网是因为私事。

在这些人中，52%的受调查者表示他们宁可放弃早上的咖啡时光，也不愿意把自己的电脑从互联网上断开。

在工作时上网平均花费的时间是每周12.6小时，但员工们估计其中有3.4小时贡献给了与工作无关的冲浪活动，而IT经理们则认为这一数字接近6个小时。

“随着网络的工作用途和私人用途之间的界限越来越模糊，很多员工在开始依靠互联网完成工作任务的同时，也会在工作时间顺便处理一些私事。”负责这次调查的Websense网络公司的乔夫·哈贾特说。

最受欢迎的站点有新闻网站(81%)、个人邮箱(61%)、网上银行(58%)及旅游(56%)和购物(52%)网站。

和女性相比，更多的男性承认在办公室里访问过和工作无关的网站，承认此事的两性比率分别约为62%和54%。

男性访问体育网站的几率是女性的2.3倍，访问炒股网站的几率则是女性的三倍多。几乎有1/4的男人表示自己在工作时间访问过色情网站，尽管只有17%承认他们是故意的。

除了上网冲浪外，18%的上班族表示他们会收听或收看网络数据流媒体，还有16%的人承认使用即时消息聊天，尽管2/3的公司禁止员工使用网络聊天工具。

但是，当网络的使用越来越普及的时候，公司似乎识破了在办公时间打电玩的员工的诡计。仅有6%的员工坦白承认曾在办公时间打电子游戏，比一年前的14%有所降低。