What Does Away From Keyboard (AFK) Mean?
“Away from keyboard” (AFK) is a type of chat lingo that shows a user is stepping away from a hardware device. It was often used in chat rooms and bulletin board systems in the early days of internet chat, to let people know when someone was available and ready to respond to text messages.
Techopedia Explains Away From Keyboard (AFK)
In a concentrated internet chat, “afk” can mean anything, from having to wrangle kids or look out the window to monitor a back yard, to times when users have to leave the room entirely. This term was extremely useful in traditional settings, where people were chatting to each other on computers continually, back and forth, and wanted to know why there might be a lack of immediate response.
