It's 11PM. Do you know where your browser is?

Night owls rejoice: Americans' web surfing habits are skewing later and later, to the point where 11PM Eastern is now the busiest hour of traffic for U.S. web surfers.

This is a huge shift from recent habits, when most web browsing occured during business hours, with a heavy dropoff after quittin' time. And while there's still a "mini-peak" at 4PM Eastern (a combination of post-lunch surfing on the west coast and people too burned out to do any more actual work on the east coast), it's still the late night hours that see the most business.

The information comes courtesy of research from an American computer security firm, and the fun facts get more and more interesting the deeper you look at their notes. Traffic doesn't just peak at 11PM, it keeps going awfully late: At 2AM Eastern, traffic is at the same level as it is at 9AM the next morning, when you'd expect to see a big jump in traffic levels as legions of web surfers check their email as they stumble into work and put off doing anything they're being paid for.

And even more curiously, the phenomenon seems distinctly American (and a little Canadian): In Europe, traffic spikes at 9PM, then dramatically falls off, owing to the fact that Europeans actually seem to have lives in the real world.

The report also goes on to suggest what all these night owls are doing online in the wee hours, but I doubt it would come as much of a surprise. Aside from the obvious -- Youtube, video games, and lots of porn -- most appear to be reading this very blog.

Go to bed.