3.3.1. Online lurking
Although students do communicate with friends by posting information on Facebook, they spend much of their time reading
and/or viewing information without directly interacting in any way. In a survey question asking how much time was spent
observing without posting (or “lurking”) during the previous week, 44.57% of respondents reported “quite a bit,” 19.57% reported
“a whole lot,” 25% reported “some,” and 10.87% said “not much.” By contrast, when asked how much time on Facebook was spent
performing activities (e.g., posting information) during the previous week, 19.57% answered “quite a bit,” 8.70% “a whole lot,”
51.09% “some,” and 20.65% “not much.”
This emphasis on “observing” rather than “doing” was reiterated in the daily activities checklist portion of the diary measure.
The percentage of students who reported performing each of 26 activities during a sampled week is presented in Table 6. The
frequency of participation in specific activities was measured by calculating the percent of respondents who used a specific
Facebook function for each day that the checklist was completed. Three “lurking” activities were performed frequently by the
majority of participants: 69.57% looked at or read others' profiles often (5–7 days) during the week they completed the diary,
58.70% often looked at photographs, and 54.35% often read their news feed about what their friends were doing on Facebook. One
student's reaction underscores the general sentiments about observing peers on Facebook. She says:
“Facebook is extremely voyeuristic – there's something great, and at the same time, creepy, about knowing when someone
you haven't talked to in 5 years broke up with their boyfriend who you never even met.”