Lucy Burroughs answered
“Surfing the internet” just means browsing online – whether that’s following random links on Wikipedia, or checking your Facebook and clicking on the links that your friends have shared.
You’re surfing the internet when you’re using the web without any particular purpose.
If you open your laptop and go online without any goal other than to pass time, that’s known as surfing!
Where Does The Phrase Come From?
“Surfing” is used as a metaphor, really – if you think about how easily surf-boarders glide from one wave to another, never staying in one place, you can see why surfing is a good metaphor for what we do online.
In fact, “surfing” has been used to describe switching easily between things for quite a while – in 1986, The Wall Street Journal wrote about “channel-surfing,” which is the act of flicking mindlessly between channels in search of something to watch.
If you think about it, that’s pretty much what you’re doing when you’re surfing the web – you’re using the internet without any particular goal or target, other than to find something to keep you entertained.
Hope that helps!
You’re surfing the internet when you’re using the web without any particular purpose.
If you open your laptop and go online without any goal other than to pass time, that’s known as surfing!
Where Does The Phrase Come From?
“Surfing” is used as a metaphor, really – if you think about how easily surf-boarders glide from one wave to another, never staying in one place, you can see why surfing is a good metaphor for what we do online.
In fact, “surfing” has been used to describe switching easily between things for quite a while – in 1986, The Wall Street Journal wrote about “channel-surfing,” which is the act of flicking mindlessly between channels in search of something to watch.
If you think about it, that’s pretty much what you’re doing when you’re surfing the web – you’re using the internet without any particular goal or target, other than to find something to keep you entertained.
Hope that helps!
