'Lurking' behind closed doors

Today's adolescents are constantly spending time on social media. The Plurals generation has a staggering amount of people that are considered social media "lurkers". According to this CNN story, the term "lurking" means, "reading the never-ending stream of their peers' activities without posting anything themselves." The lurkers of social media are purely checking their peers posts and not posting anything with their own opinion or stance.

When I first saw this article, I had to ask myself, "Are you a lurker?" I am an avid social media user, but I often catch myself lurking and simply roaming through the social media feed just to like things and explore others posts with no intent to post anything myself. The lurking method to social media is more apparent and popular than we may think. A lot of my friends are terrible Twitter junkies and will do whatever they can to find the newest trend on their timelines. Even when they get on Instagram or Snapchat, they are opening the app and looking at the activity with no intent to post something themselves and start a new conversation on their own.

Lurkers are a new breed to the technological audience. Does that mean because they are new, that they are unimportant? In some peoples opinions, yes. Social media can be used for multiple reasons, and in my opinion, just surfing the web for the newest meme or the funniest vine, is pointless. I hate seeing guys, especially guys my age, go nuts about being on Twitter and talking about their timeline. Don't get me wrong, Twitter is an amazing tool for networking, communicating and PR, as well as to socialize, but when all you do is get on Twitter and waste your data on retweeting videos of cats using GoPro's and 30 second fight vines, it is a waste of resources and just a desperate attempt to entertain yourself.