Tangled web left by online networking
The internet has given our insatiable desire to communicate, form "communities" and validate ourselves in new and unrestricted outlets.
Swansea councillors Peter Black and Rene Kinzett are among the many who enjoy a Twitter — even during last Thursday's council meeting.
Facebook, the world's leading social networking site, is valued in billions of pounds, with smaller rivals MySpace and Bebo recently bought out by media behemoths Rupert Murdoch and AOL.
The genie is out of the bottle — but what good it's doing is the subject of debate.
Earlier this year, leading neuroscientist Susan Greenfield warned that social networking sites could alter the minds of young users when they reach adulthood.
She argued they could leave minds infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, an inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity. Such sites can provide a "constant reassurance — that you are listened to, recognised, and important", she said.
While much of our day-to-day interaction is naturally drawn to people we feel validated by, Baroness Greenfield said the effects of sitting behind a screen needed careful study.
"It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the past decade might, in some way, be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder," she said.
Last weekend another public figure, the Archbishop of Westminster, added his concerns to the social networking site debate.
Vincent Nichols told a Sunday newspaper that he felt the growing use of networking sites, email and texts were dehumanising community life.
"We're losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point," said the archbishop.
Facebook and MySpace might build communities, he said, but he questioned just what sort of communities they were.
"If we mean by community a genuine growing together and a mutual of sharing in an interest that is of some significance then it needs more than Facebook," he argued, adding that some young people can be left desolate when their transient cyber-friendships collapsed.
Of course, these social networking sites are a great way of tracking down old friends, making new ones, trading harmless banter and having a chuckle at those embarrassing photos from last Friday's night out.
They also enable people to send out a strong message on particular political, environmental or personal issue, such as the incredible support on Facebook for retired Wales football international John Hartson who is suffering from cancer.
Social networking sites can also be tremendously liberating for youngsters growing up in small communities where "people look alike and drink alike", argued another cleric, Giles Fraser, on Radio 4.
Rev Fraser, who'll be the next Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, said that for people getting flak for their skin colour, religion or sexuality, social networking sites were "a vital portal into a world of acceptance and mutual support."
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