What is stalling?

What is stalling?
Lying is a method that we use in order to protect ourselves from silly things. We sometimes use it when we are in front of the computer and our mom asks us to go to bed, I for example am logged in facebook, but instead of saying that I am on facebook I say that I am working on homework so she cannot really send me to bed without my homework done. A prove to see that in the past people used the same method could be Penelope’s web, she lied to everybody by knitting a web and un-knitting it at night so while she waited for her husband, Ulysses. This could also be seen as intelligence. It is intelligent but we lie, is what I like to call a white lie. When you have a friend that invites you to a boring conference you lie in order to say no, and not hurt his feelings. When I say a white lie, I do not think about it, it is a natural thing and that is what parents try to stop when we are growing up now is habit and cannot really stop. Penelope stopped when she was caught, I think lying is only bad when you are caught because if you do not nobody knows.
Are white lies considered bad? Are we not to lie? Was Penelope right about the web?