How safe is your life from 'Facebook'?

I still remember when I set up my Facebook account. I got an email from a friend of mine who lives abroad telling me I should join. I had a look around the site, was amused to see I could 'befriend' people from school to whom I hadn't spoken in years, and joined.

Since them I have accumulated (and subsequently un-tagged) over 500 photos of myself, I have made (and lost) countless 'friends', I have joined groups and pages and I have spent unknown hours stalking vague acquaintances. This week I've had a few reasons to consider moving all my photos and deleting my profile. Once and for all.

It was my daughter's school play this week and cameras & video cameras were strictly forbidden. At the end of the play the headmistress removed several children who's parents didn't want people taking pictures of them and allowed us to snap away, although she told us that we were not allowed to put pictures on the internet if someone else's child is in it. Reason One - fear of Facebook paedos means that in 20 years when I'm trying to embarrass my daughter in front of her new boyfriend, I have no video and little photographic evidence of her first school nativity.

I did get a great photo of my kid and her best friend and as soon as I showed it to her she asked "Are you going to put it on Facebook mummy?". Well, no, I'm not. Reason Two - Facebook, and the sharing of photos on-line, has become so ingrained in our daily life that a four year old assumes all good photos should be on Facebook. She doesn't look through a real, tangible photo album. She just presses the right arrow key.

One of my friends has a birthday this week. Now, this person in particular very rarely uses Facebook, maybe once a month, but by midday had over 30 birthday wishes. I wonder how many cards they get? Phone calls? Reason Three - birthdays, Christmas, births, deaths and marriages are no longer important enough events to send a card. Just leave a message on someone's wall! I think it's impersonal and thoughtless. By all means leave a message on Facebook, but really, how difficult is it to buy a card?

I look through my 'news feed' (quick Reason Four - it's not news! It's mundane pieces of information!) and am lucky that there are very few 'Moaning Myrtles' on there but that hasn't always been the case. Reason Five - OK, so you're having a bad day. We get it. It was the same yesterday, it will be the same tomorrow. I think if people spent less time moaning about things and more time addressing the problems they might just see life getting better. That's not going to happen on Facebook.

Reason Six is simple. How many of the people on your Facebook list are friends? How many did you move into the acquaintances list when that feature was enabled? It's rude to de-friend someone on Facebook, even if you haven't spoken or interacted in years. There's people on my list I would happily never see again but I don't delete them because I don't want to hurt their feelings.

There's a real stalker element to consider too. I am so guilty of this one. You see, not everyone knows how to make their account really private. There are certain people, some I fell out with years ago, some I've never spoken to, and I like to keep up with what they're doing. Reason Seven - Facebook makes a stalker out of all of us.

So, am I going to delete my profile? Not right now. That's Reason Eight - it compels you to engage. So much of my history from the last 5 years is in those blue and white pages and I'd feel sad to lose it. Plus, you can never really delete your profile. Facebook stores it, buried deep, just waiting for you to log in and reactivate your account. And even when you do go so fars as to click the 'Deactivate My Account' button you're bombarded with photos and pleas that 'so-and-so will miss you'. Tugging at my heart strings...

Facebook is taking over our lives. Companies no longer have websites, they use Facebook. Schools don't have reunions, everyone knows everything about old school friends anyway. I feel like I'm being smothered with a virtual cushion. I feel like Mark Zuckerberg has eaten my soul...

What I am going to do is minimise, take a more zen-like approach to Facebook. It will take a while, and it will be hard. Oh well, there's always twitter!