I RECEIVED a group email from an old college friend titled "Goodbye Facebook, hello world" this week.

"Dudes, dudettes, people," he began.

"I've deactivated my Facebook account.

"It has been good to catch up with people, many of whom I've not seen in quite a while, but it's got out of hand.

"Now I've done something about it. And I'm looking forward to getting my life back."

Facebook, in case you've been living under a rock for the last six months, is a website that allows you to make "friends" with people you used to know in school, met fleetingly on a night out, or just like the look of.

Once you're "friends" you can look at their conversations, see their photographs, learn all about their hobbies, and even see what they're doing at that exact moment.

It's generally replaced work in most offices around the UK.

But like all good things, I reckon it's coming to an end.

Like a passionate holiday fling which was red hot in the sun, but a damp squib back on home turf, it's just not something that the average person can keep up with.

Although I'm not ready to take a leaf out of my mate's book yet and deactivate my account, I can understand why he's done it.

There just isn't the time in the day to spend chatting to people you sat next to in French class aged 11.

This website is more addictive than crack - you log on and begin chatting, zombie-biting, and buying your virtual friends virtual rounds of drinks and before you know it two hours have been gobbled up.

And I don't know about you, but I just can't afford the time.

The evenings are short enough as it is - by the time you've got home from work, put a wash on, made tea, eaten tea, washed up, made sandwiches for the next day, hung the washing out, and finally sat down for five minutes to read the papers, it's time to go to bed.

How did people cope before the invention of vacuum cleaners, washing machines and microwaves?