Technology has leapt forward in the last few years and it continues to advance all the time. While, in the grander scheme of things this means we are able to farm more effectively, build faster transport systems and bigger, more spectacular buildings, technological progress has also lead to shifts in the way we conduct our personal lives.
Today, we carry a host of computing devices in our pockets and handbags: music storage units mobile phones and laptops are never far out of reach. Indeed, a significant proportion of time is spent living, not in the 'real' solid world, but in various computer generated simulations of it.
Teenagers – that demographic brought up on what older people think of as the new technology – tend to be particularly invested in online realities which range from virtual fashion worlds to dating sites which allow them to interact indirectly.
Adolescence is traditionally believed to be a difficult period, chiefly because it is the time during which we go about actively constructing our own identities. Virtual dating sites have added a new dimension to the business of growing up in the sense that these afford their teenage participants the opportunity to write their own quasi-fictional selves and then to interact with other people in character, so to speak.
Indeed, this is what is chiefly interesting about online social networking in general: it gives us control over our identities in a way that reality does not.