You are scrolling through reels when suddenly, an entertaining video pops up. Without skipping a beat, you go onto their social media page to check out their content, and even though you only lurk for ten minutes or so, you still manage to learn about their lives and family without meaning to. You will never message, meet or talk to them, yet you still keep tabs on them.
Keeping tabs on someone is something I frequently do, and I am fairly certain that we all do. We notice when someone updates their profile picture. We remember what they posted a month ago and what they had told a mutual friend. We know a lot more than we would ever admit in public. My argument is that this habit isn’t as pointless as it sounds.Â
Before I explain, let me state that stalking is too harsh a word to use in this context. Stalking is when we give unwanted attention to a specific person, which can cause them distress and anxiety. But what we do is more observation, I would say, since we collect information that is already public, either from social media or through our friend circles.Â
The other person is rarely harmed and, in most cases, it doesn’t even affect them. In fact, chances are that they remain blissfully unaware that someone out there is actually piecing together information about their life, which, I have to say, does sound creepier than it did in my head. People would be uneasy if they found out, and that unease is fair. But I would argue there is a difference between a glance and repeated scrutiny, and I’ll come back to where that line sits.
And we engage in this habit more often than one can admit, and that too, from a distance. We lurk on someone we won’t even speak to in real life. On paper, this way of snooping on someone whom we have no intention of talking to sounds both stupid and paradoxical. Why would we invest our time and energy in the lives of others who we are actively keeping at a distance? It does sound pointless at first glance. But I urge you to think again.Â
Distance costs us nothing. There is no rejection and no conversation, and we still end up with the information we want. A win, win and win situation. This safe distance is what we need when a relationship ends abruptly. We tap on the profiles of former partners and estranged friends, resolute never to initiate contact and thus seek closure by viewing their public updates. We then try to evaluate our worth by comparing our lives with theirs. If they are happy and thriving, our self-esteem plummets, and if they are unhappy and struggling, it soars.
Our desire to know is driven by curiosity too. Don’t tell me you have never lurked on your professors’ and old classmates’ LinkedIn profiles just to see what they have studied and where they’ve ended up. This interest can also stem from deep respect and admiration. We deep-dive into the lives of actors, musicians, and athletes and learn even the minute details of their daily routines. Though the odds are that we will never meet them in person or have conversations with them, we still follow them because we look to them as our source of inspiration. Some of us even go so far as to borrow their discipline or imitate their lifestyle.
And sometimes, we do it for other people. When someone in your friend group says, “Do you remember S?”, chances are you are like me and end up answering with a blank, wide-eyed stare. And your friend, probably exasperated like mine always is, will pull up the profile picture of S. This small act establishes the context for the gossip and helps us connect the dots among the tidbits of information.
So where exactly is the line? This habit doesn’t really cross the line if it remains a glance rather than intense scrutiny, like checking daily and feeling worse every single time. And most of the time, we aren’t really looking at the people. We are looking for context, comparison, validation, and proof that we are doing just fine in the current rat race.