6 bad American habits that are spreading around the world

Americans have a reputation for being chained to their desks at work, and the data backs it up: 62% of American professionals eat lunch at their office desk, according to The New York Times.

But Americans might not be the only ones for much longer. In France, the average lunch break has shrunk from 80 minutes in 1975 to just 22 minutes in 2011, according to NPR, putting a dent in cafe sales and forcing more French people to stick by their computers for their midday meal.

Black Friday was once a distinctly American occasion — the day after Thanksgiving when retailers offer outrageous discounts to kick off the holiday shopping season.

However, the trend is going global. Several countries including Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Norway, France, Australia, Romania, and Germany all have begun to copy the tradition in recent years, with retailers declaring massive discount days on or around the same time as Black Friday in the US.

Canada's reasoning is especially interesting: According to the CBC, Canadian retailers started their own Black Friday tradition to discourage Canadians from crossing the border and taking advantage of the discounts in the US.

Americans are known for working longer hours than almost anyone else in the world.

One estimate from 2014 pegged the average American full-time employee as working 47 hours a week. Meanwhile, people in western European countries like Germany and Sweden work closer to 35 hours a week, and are actually legally entitled to refuse to work more than 48 hours a week.

But that's not the case in every country. The American tendency to stay late at the office appears to be creeping over to the United Kingdom, where the average employee works more than 42 hours a week.

The United States can claim to be the birthplace of many of the world's most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

But Americans have long been surpassed in social media usage, and the US doesn't even appear in the top 10 countries anymore.

According to the latest data, the top spots now go to the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. People there all average more than three hours a day on social media sites.

According to a 2015 report, Americans claim the dubious honor of watching more TV than anyone else in the world, watching four hours and 42 minutes a day on average.

But Americans have some competition on that front. Australia, Italy, and Poland each average more than four hours a day. And when it comes to binge-watching Netflix, Canada already has the US beat.