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Do you stay up late into the night using the internet? Are you grumpy or anxious when you can't log on?

Then you may be addicted to the internet - an affliction that, according to new research, now affects 6 per cent of people - roughly 182 million - around the world, the Daily Mail reports.

By studying previous academic papers that referenced the addiction, and comparing this to internet penetration figures for each country, they also found the Middle East is the most addicted region of the world.

A pair of researchers from the University of Hong Kong began by searching online databases for previous academic papers.

They specifically searched for papers that referenced terms such as internet addiction and dependency, and online and net addicts.

From this, Cecelia Cheng and Angel Yee-lam Li chose 80 global studies, covering reports of web addiction across 31 nations in seven regions.

This included the US, Australia, Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Iran, Isarel, Lebanon, Turkey, China, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and Columbia.

As part of these past studies, a total of 544 participants were surveyed about their internet habits.

There was almost a 50/50 split between the genders - 49 per cent were male – and the average age was 18.42 years.

This data was combined with each nation’s gross domestic product, internet penetration and reported number of web users.

The study revealed that the prevalence rate of internet addiction across these 31 nations averaged at 6 per cent.

The highest incidents of web addiction were found in the Middle East, at 10.9 per cent, which included Iran, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey.

The lowest prevalence was reported in North and West Europe on 2.6 per cent, by comparison South and East Europe was on 6.1 per cent.

North America had an internet addiction prevalence rate of 8 per cent, Oceania was on 4.3 per cent and South America had no reported cases.

However, this was due to the fact only one person from this region featured in the academic papers.

According to the figures, 68 per cent of people in the 31 countries have access to the web, known as internet penetration rate (IPR).

IPR was highest in Oceania, at 89 per cent, and lowest in the Middle East on 55 per cent.

This suggests that despite fewer people having access to the web in the Middle East, those who are, are more likely to be addicted to the internet.

The findings are published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.