By Emma Clayton

It took just a few minutes to sell my soul, but I fear it will haunt me forever. Reader, I’ve joined Facebook.

After years of dismissing it as meaningless indulgence for the self-obsessed, I came to realise that resistance is futile. Social media is a necessary evil, a tool of my trade, and since just about everyone I know is on Facebook I was starting to feel like I was pressing my nose up against a window, watching a wild party I wasn’t invited to.

My sister, a prolific Facebook-user, set me up on it and as I tried to familiarise myself with the little ‘fb’ icons, I felt like an incompetent toddler when she told her 12-year-old, “Don’t do it for her, she needs to learn for herself.”

Suddenly I was getting ‘friend requests’ from people I’d forgotten even existed. “I haven’t seen him since 1991!” I cried, as my ‘phone pinged yet again. A couple of old college friends got in touch, which was lovely, although one of them appears to have turned into her mother; greying hair, bespectacled and fond of waterproofs.

Another friend has been posting endless photos of her family holiday, with such military precision that I wondered how she finds time to actually enjoy the holiday.

Facebook is one huge network of friends of friends, or “people you might know”, which can be overwhelming if you give it too much thought.

I quickly discovered that you can lose 30 minutes of your life scrolling through endless profile shots, getting quite a buzz when requests are accepted, and feeling snubbed when they’re not.

Then there’s all the other stuff. I found myself watching footage of a bride falling over and a toddler wreaking havoc with a paintbrush. I “liked” a photo of someone’s blue hair and another of an old lady feeding a goat. I “shared” a clip of a stressed man dragging a sofa up a flight of stairs, and I fear I may have unintentionally offended several thousand of Julia Roberts’ followers with a pithy response to something worthy she wrote.

It has been just over a week since I’ve been on Facebook and this is what I’ve learned so far: l People like dogs. A lot. If I see one more clip of a boxer puppy crawling through a catflap I may have to ‘unfriend’ the ‘friend’ who keeps posting them.

l There are way too many corny proverbs out there, most of which don’t make sense.

l Humans seem to have a primal need to let the world know their every move, even if they’re just queuing in a petrol station.

l While it’s nice to keep in touch with people, Facebook has largely left me cold. I can get through life without novelty dog clips.