When you find two youngsters texting each other whilst sitting on the same school bus, you begin to see that the world is changing and not for the better. Too many youngsters inhabit their bedrooms for long periods of time ‘communicating’ with others by text, instant messaging or via something called ‘a wall’. It terrifies the living daylights out of me that we have allowed ourselves to come to this.

When I was wee, I used to communicate with my friends by actually meeting up with them and talking to them. If we were going to insult one another we did it face to face, fall out with each other, perhaps indulge in a skirmish, make up and then get on with being friends again. Now, youngsters engage in ‘cyber bullying’ where they can ensure maximum exposure of their taunting to everyone that’s logged on.

We have social network web pages where individuals display all of their talents to a faceless and nameless audience – photographs of nights out, where it is clear that the purpose of the night has been about taking photographs that can be uploaded, so that others can marvel at the excitement of the publisher’s life.

Youngsters have become so engulfed in the age of celebrity that they truly believe that they are celebrities themselves, inhabiting a virtual world where one’s personal remarks, ‘likes’ and photographs actually ‘matter’, when the truth is that they don’t and not a soul is interested in your night out a week ago on Friday.

They seem to compete with each other gleefully with regard to the number of ‘friends’ they each have. I know youngsters who are proud to relate that they have “347 friends”. I always reply, instantaneously, “No, you don’t, you have three.”

We seem to have lost our sense of balance, our innate humility giving way to a dark desire to be noticed and celebrated. I am aware, of course, that now that such sites are here, they are here forever. My only hope is that they eventually become the domain of the few and that the majority see them for the waste of time they actually are.

Such sites are, of course, a massive blessing to the police, University and College Admissions officers, prospective employers and of course, last but not least, to predators of questionable morality. It’s time we all woke up to the reality that such sites promote the very worst of human characteristics.

As I tell my students, don’t publish anything on a website that you wouldn’t let your granny see, because once published it is potentially there forever.