It's perverse that the very technology that is arguably significantly responsible for much of the atomisation and fragmentation that the same technology is then used to address.

Yes, social networking can bring communities together - but communities of online personalities. Simply put - we are different people online. We are different people when we're with our parents. Behind the anonymity of the computer screen we can say what we like, be whom we like.

When we read that society spends too much time watching tv we cry "we should turn off the television and spend more time together, or talking" - and yet when we turn off the television screens and sit in front of a computer screen instead, we think it's acceptable all of a sudden.

It's still anti-social to sit behind a computer. Yes social networking sites can bring people together, but so does knocking on a door, so does shovelling snow, so does doing favours for one another, so does visiting your relatives - and far more effectively.

I'm not saying social networking sites are evil - as the article points out, they bring disparate people together and can organise time and people very effectively and efficiently. But if the point is to bring people together, then surely it's working against its own aims...