I agree.
The learning process from doing trades and doing these social trading and copy trading depends on the individual that are studying about it.
It might take a lot of time and money for someone who doesn't have a background but it could be less for those that are risk takers and have a background with them. People think that it's easy to do copy trading because you don't do anything but don't forget that the money is yours and your letting its fate depend on the trader you copy.
When people intend to study trading, the steps that need to be taken on how to improve skills and not be advised to rely completely on copying trading even though some people consider this method to be easier. But back as you talked about that we put in money and follow fully a copy of trading sometimes it will not give any results. A separate analysis will be far more convincing and even though our loss can evaluate the cause and if we fully follow the trading patterns of people, in my opinion it is quite disadvantaged because our skills will never increase.
Separate analysis is still a must when someone does copy trading. He'll get to see the idea on how the trader he's about to copy does.
It's not always on how easy it is but the stats that matter and possibly the picks that the traders that someone is going to copy like showing the style of his trading.
It's not lazy though when it's part of the feature of a platform but don't rely too much on them. Some treats it as a passive income but what happens if the trader you copy lost?