Have you ever looked at someone’s profile on Facebook that you were NOT friends with? Done it on Instagram too? Are you nodding your head right now? Thought so! This my friends, is what most people loosely term “Facebook stalking”, or in this situation, “Instagram stalking”. Most of us are guilty of doing this a time or two with no one being the wiser. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Recently a single friend of mine, who we will call “Rebecca Phalanges”, stopped by for a little visit. She told me she had started dating someone. Me being the curious person I am, asked to see a picture of him, “Let me see his Facebook.” I said. Rebecca told me she would show me a picture of him from his Instagram. So she handed over her phone and I started looking. Now somewhere during all of this, she informed me that she wasn’t actually “following” him and had not asked to be his Facebook friend. “Why?” was my first question. She said that in a new relationship, it’s much too soon to follow someone or friend them. Hmmm… well I’ve been with my husband for 12 years, so what “Rebecca” was saying was complete foreign territory to me. I told her I thought that was pretty stupid. That would be the first thing I’d do! And then you can always “unfollow” or “unfriend” them if things don’t work out, right? “No, it’s too soon!” She said.

Here is my daughter re-enacting my shock to what I had done.

So I continued to scroll through on her phone looking at pictures of this new man in her life, when all of a sudden a HEART appeared on one of the pictures. A heart! OH MY GOSH! Oh no! For all of you that are not familiar with Instagram, you double tap a picture to “like” it, and a heart appears. This then notifies said owner of picture that you, with your username, (in this case, “Rebecca’s” user name is pretty obvious as to who she is) like their picture. I didn’t say anything for a moment because I didn’t know why that had happened. I had just been scrolling! But as I sat there and the panic inside me slowly started to build, I knew I had to say something. I turned to Rebecca and said “Um, a heart just appeared on one of his pictures, I think I accidentally liked it” or something along those lines. OOPS!

She was not happy to say the least. To make it worse, I had liked a picture of him and his dad which would make her look super crazy.Rebecca quickly grabbed the phone and looked at it, “YOU LIKED IT! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” In my defense, her phone is much fancier than mine. I have a super cheap introductory smartphone and hers must be incredibly sensitive to swiping motions! Mine takes some major tapping to make that heart appear. I felt so bad though! I told her to unlike it and do it fast.

Now, we’ve never found out if this guy ever knew that she had “liked” his picture. It all happened so fast. I still can’t believe I did it. I felt bad but it was really funny.

So I guess the moral of the story is, don’t spy! Or don’t let me use your phone. Either way, I guess Rebecca learned something that day! 🙂