Creeping. Let's just start off right now and admit that we all do it. You're in the library with the honorable intention of studying, but then your friend posts an Instagram tagging her (hot) friend from home. Before you know it, you've creeped through his entire profile and are now 24 weeks deep in the pretty blonde--who appears to be his girlfriend--'s life.
Our generation gets ridiculed for our lack of face-to-face communication, and yeah, of course looking at someone's profile is not the best way to get to know them at all. But, a lot of the time, that's how it works out for us. We choose to stalk instead of putting that effort into something more effective--like getting to know someone in person.
The worrisome truth is that you can learn a lot about a person, complete strangers included, by simply thumbing (literally) through their posts: where they eat, what their dog looks like, what their mom's name is. If you're really serious about this creeping thing, you even know whose tweets they favorite (he must like her!), and who they were dating freshman year of high school. While the assumptions we make based off of our findings may or may not be accurate, we often choose to form opinions anyways. Put simply, this can make for a very narrow-minded generation.
Every time you post something, you're putting it out there so someone can draw conclusions about you. While I'll admit I experience a great amount of angst when I come across a private profile whilst attempting to creep, being "private" is effective in that it blocks others from assuming they know everything based off of a few pictures. It forces you and I to actually have to interact with that person in order to get an idea of who they are.
Our friends are good examples of those kinds of people who we (one way or another) actually got to know, regardless of whether it started with a little stalking. And, while creeping on strangers is fun, creeping on your friends can be a fun all of its own because you do actually know them, and creeping is more personal. That's probably why the news around the dinner table last night was that the new Snapchat update had eliminated the option of seeing who is on your friends' "Best Friends" list (gasp!)
Snapchat is one of those social media apps that seems, in a way, safer. You have to add people and be added back in order to communicate, and, even then, if you don't post stories, the only people who are seeing your snaps are those who you send it to directly. But don't be fooled, there is, or, at least, there was still creeping to be had on Snapchat. For example, you're talking to a guy and his ex-girlfriend is still in his top friends: red flag.
Snapchat was that final step of creeping on someone you're getting to know, and eliminating that option makes it so you might just have to actually get to know that person. Snapchat may have just taken a step to improve each and every one of our social skills. Well played, Snapchat, well played.
