Feeling fragile? Avoid Facebook at all costs.

For someone with very little opportunity to get out, a spare laptop and the odd fifteen minutes of free time inbetween removing sludge from high chairs and refereeing a spat over Scoop (a yellow digger to the uninitiated), Facebook might seem like the perfect opportunity to catch up on your social life. Trouble is, I'm finding my FB sessions increasingly depressing. It's a bit like those studies that feminists used to do of women's self-esteem after reading glossy magazines - looking at bite-size, cherry-picked snippets of my friends' lives makes me feel like everyone is living a much more glamorous existence than me. This may well be true but it's also a result of the fact that Facebook effectively encourages us all to do our own pr and distill our lives into the most appealing chunks. For example, as a former tv producer I know all about the sheer grind of production, yet when I see posts about my friend's new jobs I nearly always just feel jealous of their fascinating new project, not relieved that it's not me that'll be working 'till midnight five days on the trot. As I almost never post myself, I'd say I'm more of a FB stalker than a proper user but if I did constantly update my status there's almost no way I could avoid looking like a tedious smug mum. It would be all, 'look at the boy's tickling each other, aren't they cute'. Maybe we should dedicate a FB day to tedium - everyone could chronicle the dullest task in their day and thereby make everyone else feel that their life is actually quite exciting in comparison.