Don't get me wrong, in the beginning I frenziedly signed up to every social networking site from Facebook to Twitter, excited that the world had finally come around to my way of thinking.

Writing something banal on your BFFs 'wall' every month or so, is the perfect way to maintain friendships if you're a lazy girl like me.

But now the damn things seem to have taken over. If I'm not being poked, then I discover someone I've never heard of is 'following' me (which, by the way, is probably the creepiest thing I've ever heard), or I've been challenged to a test whereby I have to remember and name every '80s cartoon made, or my sister-in-law has sent me a pet cow for a virtual farm I never asked for.

Then there are the status updates. Like an omnipresent shrink, we're asked 'what are you thinking?'. Of course anyone with an ounce of self-respect makes something up about attending their weekly fire-eating lesson or making fondue, naked.

But some people, and you know who you are, actually publish every last genuine, dull intricacy of their lives for all to see which is just, you know, depressing.

I am notified by e-mail every minute or so that someone, somewhere, that I may or may not know, wants a piece of me.

My inbox is folding under the pressure but whilst I can no longer take the guilt of not replying to Tweets, posts or graffiti on my 'wall', I cannot bring myself to close the accounts either as, alas, I would then be out of (or free of, depending on how you look at it) the loop.

Sigh. Oh well, I suppose if it's good enough for Stephen Fry...