Four years to the day I came off it, I reinstated my Facebook account. I admit, it was a little strange to find a load of dormant ‘friends’ still there, but once I got over that and the realisation that they hadn’t actually noticed I had gone, it was thrilling – on a par with discovering televisions had gone from black and white to colour. Better still, I had a few Instant Messenger chats with old friends that I hadn’t spoken to in ages – probably for the whole of the time I wasn’t on Facebook actually – that left me feeling joyful and full of celebration for the immediacy of being in touch and the emotion that comes with it. Then the novelty of being back on wore off. And there it was again; this big realisation that I still don’t enjoy Facebook. For it turns out that those magic moments of connection with true friends are few and far between.

Before Facebook, I was a freelance writer happily working from home. Then I joined Facebook and became someone who was confusing solitude with loneliness, by virtue of the fact that there was all this activity going on within the virtual world – parties, mountain vistas, café breakfasts, pub nights – and I was not part of any of it. I found myself becoming miserable and over-analytical, because even when you know that it is someone’s own particular version of a highlight reel, watching it from your back-office leaves you feeling as though somehow you are missing out. And let’s face it, there’s no worse feeling in life than not being invited along.

Another issue I had with Facebook is that for every person that was hiding the bits that involved putting the bins out or flossing the teeth, there was someone who was elevating the mundane to the extraordinary – you know, giving us hourly updates about how many sugars they put in their tea or how they found a strange shaped crisp, with the same enthusiasm normally reserved for getting married or having triplets. It got me wondering what life was going to end up like if we were all going to continually pretend we were the star of our own film. That’s when I started to panic. Worse still, I had this bizarre dilemma of whether imparting a little bit of information was more harmful than jumping in with both social feet, for fear that someone might actually think your life is rather quiet. Facebook was a tap and I wasn’t sure I wanted to turn it on at full pelt. While I wanted to celebrate the friends in my life as they were in person, I didn’t want to try and align the reality with their ‘Facebrag’ version. I also didn’t want to find myself checking out some person’s wedding photos, the ‘someone’ who incidentally, hadn’t invited me to the wedding.

I only acted on my reservations about Facebook when I happened to come across a book called ‘My Year of Disconnect’, written by Susan Maushart who did a six-month trial without technology in her home. Granted her story was a little extreme, but given that she was self-depreciating, well researched and honest, I forgave her. Something in that book resonated with me and suddenly, it all became very clear. I don’t need to be doing this. So, I came off Facebook just like that and four years went by.

Someone once said that Facebook is the equivalent of looking in the fridge for something to eat when you’re not actually hungry and that rather nicely sums up those early days. It was downright strange not being on it. I can only liken it to the feeling you have when you haven’t done something on your tick-list you ought to have done. Then, little by little, the urge to go back on dissipated, along with my need to collect one and all in the same virtual space. I just concentrated on keeping in touch with people who didn’t think me weird for not being on Facebook and gradually I found my timeline restored – as in the people I had lost touch with in my everyday were staying in my past. I no longer had to hear about what they were having for breakfast, feeling like the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’ in ‘A Christmas Carol’. Instead, I could revel in nostalgia, preserving the memories in such a way that I could treasure what I had with them instead of observing them live a life that I was no longer part of.

So, given that that Facebook still brings on a facial tic, why did I come back on it again you ask? Firstly, I’ve written a novel about a woman in her late twenties who is trying to find reality in the social media age, so it seemed a little odd not to be on Facebook myself. More importantly, who am I kidding here? These days, such is the influence of Facebook, it’s downright essential for marketing purposes. Oh and there’s the fact that I discovered Twitter too, which has given me the buzz of social media but without all the baggage that comes from presenting your best self to familiar people. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook is now just another social media site to me and I use it sparingly. Sure, I’m under no illusion that I am no doubt missing out on tons of announcements, trophies won and tropical holiday destinations, but somehow, the pleasure of being oblivious outweighs everything else, as life feels a bit more real. In this social media age, that’s as good as it’s going to get.