Why do the status' of my friends contradict the game challenge responses I get?

It seems I am having issues with an alleged feature of this website allowing users to challenge their friends in a game of chess.

If I go to my friends list it can be sorted by last online activity.  This causes the players on the site to either have a green icon saying "online" or a red icon saying "playing".  I went to a friends page and noted the number of games that have played in total over the past 7 days.  Then I decided to challenge this player who still had a green icon.  I got a reply saying that the user was already playing a game. This is possible if a person started a game since the list had been generated.  However, when I went back to my friend's page and noted the number of games in the past 7 days, it was at the same number, and, also, when I clicked refresh, the icon was still green (not red).  Not only was the number of games played in total contradicting the challenge request response, but, also, Chess games usually last at least a full minute, and if it had been true that the game had just been played and ended already, then the game would have needed to have lasted only a few seconds, at most, which is unlikely.  I did this for a few friends and got the same results. 

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice or thoughts on this issue I, sadly, have.

Sometimes the server lags even though it is red or green. The most accurate ones is indicated the one with request accepted or declined.

This implies the status indicator is intentionally useless, since the time people are online but not playing is rather short to begin with for most people, and that the challenge system is intentionally broken. (It would be easy to send challenges to one's inbox here in the event the user is playing or offline, and chess.com intentionally declined to allow that.)

For me it is accurate 90% of the time. Just something is not 100% accurate.

Exactly.  Key words being For me. My account is "special".

This is strange inference. What about those that are online just to watch other games, especially during tournaments or while following a streamer?