Everyone knows that moms, being so busy, use the internet for everything from finding the best deal on diapers to researching things like the safety features of various baby strollers.

But it turns out the internet plays a far larger role in the life of the average mother, as her connection to the outside world and often serving the role of next door neighbor, fellow mom and best friend.

It's where she’s likely to spend what free time she has, playing games and sometimes just fiddling around.

“It has a very constant presence in their lives,” says Tata Sato, director of consumer insights at Mindshare, which just released a study on moms and the internet.

Mindshare's study was based on a series of focus groups as well as an online survey of 600 of mothers who had at least one child under the age of 18. It looked at their media consumption, their stress levels, and their attitudes towards motherhood.

Further, it broke down the findings into three groups: stay-at-home moms, moms who work part time and moms who held down full-time jobs.

What's perhaps most interesting is all the things mothers turn to the internet for.

When asked which of the following activities they did regularly online, the most common answer was email, which 97 percent reported using. Tied for No. 2 were online banking and search at 69 percent. Shopping was fourth at 65 percent.

Social networking came in at 18 percent, watching TV and video clips at 15 percent, and streaming radio at 14 percent.

But ahead of those latter activities, at 23 percent, was playing games.

Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers found that stay-at-home moms tend to be heavier and more multi-faceted users of the internet than working moms.

In fact, when it came to using the internet for email, finding information, playing games and making transactions, more stay at home moms said they used the internet very often than did full or part time moms. They also were more likely than the average mom to say they went to internet communities very often.

The researchers found that online media is heavily integrated into the life of a mom in part because it fulfills many of their needs. This is especially true for mothers with kids under two, a particularly busy time.

In general, mom’s overwhelming voted the internet as the media that saves them time (74 percent). It was also chosen the medium that afforded them the best quality time with their children, at 28 percent, narrowly topping TV at 26 percent.

But perhaps the best proof of the importance of the internet is that it's one of the first places a mom will go during those rate moments of me-time.

It's more popular than watching TV and movies or spending time with friends and significant others. In fact, it popped up as mom’s second favorite past time, behind only reading.