I resisted Facebook for a long time until curiosity and peer pressure conspired to hurl me into the breach. Now I have 69 "friends" (which anyone will tell you is piddly), including my long-time-no-see brother, who clearly must have bought a computer with all the money I've lent him in recent years.
Other "friends" include two ex-boyfriends, one ex-husband, an ex-employer who I once vowed to set on fire, a lovely couple I lived next door to for six months about four years ago, my grade eight co-ordinator and three long-lost cousins, including one who is drop-dead funny and I wish I'd known it long ago.
There are also several former high school colleagues who, okay, I don't actually remember (but they seem very friendly) and the daughter of a man who dated my mum about 12 years ago. There is a even a very cute guy whose origins I don't quite recall, but I know it's going to come back to me any day now.
Absent from the list are my small posse of real-life friends to whom I owe countless catch-up phone calls, overdue birthday cards, kids' presents, meaningful conversation and apologies. I will get to them all, absolutely once I stop checking Facebook.
It hasn't escaped me that I'm now part of a phenomenon that is reshaping the fabric of social relationships, if not society itself. Facebook has at once turned friendship into currency while at the same time stripping it of any real value.
We should stop fooling ourselves, says evolutionary psychologist Will Reader of Sheffield Hallam University.
"Having a huge network of online friends does not mean you have any more close friends than the rest of us," asserts Mr Reader, who it should be said does not reveal how many Facebook friends he himself has (prediction: none).
"Real friendships require face-to-face interaction where people can interpret social clues such as laughs and smiles that help determine if others are friends to be counted on."
Other critics of Facebook, including David Smallwood, an addictions expert with The Priory Institute, in Ireland, believes the 60 million-strong social networking site is fuelling insecurity among its users.
Women, he says, are particularly vulnerable because our self-worth derives much from relationship status, compelling us to acquire hundreds of "friends" on Facebook.
In countries like Britain - and arguably Australia - where traditional ties have weakened, Facebook has become a substitute for family.
"Acquisition of friends is like any other fix, but it's competitive - you judge yourself by how many friends you have online," the unfortunately named Smallwood says.
"You go out of your way to amass friends and that means people bend out of shape and become something they are not."
Certainly it's true that many Facebook hook-ups are of the long-lost variety - people we associated with 10 or more years ago (statistically, there are more high school reunions being thrown than ever before) and essentially this is a way of avoiding the demands of the present.
But at the same time, as melodious researcher Sheryl Crowe argues, if it makes you happy it can't be that bad.
Carrie Cox is a journalist, author and mother who one day hopes to finish a cup of coffee while it's still hot.
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