YOU might want to take a seat, hold on to your hat and make sure your socks are secure for this: Last week I deleted my Facebook account.

It’s a shock, I know.

I left the comfortable, safety-in-numbers majority and I’m now one of the six per cent of the population who is not part of the social network phenomenon.

It’s lonely out here but it’s far better then having to read what Steph-Who-Bullied-Me-At-High-School is doing for lunch every day.

It wasn’t easy to do, mainly because it tried to talk me out of leaving several times, like a wounded ex-boyfriend who won’t take no for an answer.

It also asked in a heart-breaking tone if we could just try one more time and see if we could possibly work things out some way...

But I hardened my heart, girded my loins and said goodbye to it with a firm hand.

And then, with one slightly underwhelming click of a button, I was ‘deactivated’.

Of course, I didn’t always dislike it – I’ve used Facebook to arrange some brilliant nights out and it was lovely seeing the pictures that everybody took at my sister’s wedding.

And who wouldn’t, initially, love a legitimate way of stalking boys they fancy?

But by this year I’d got to a point where I was picking my phone up dozens of times a day to check my news feed, and I was tired of being ‘tagged’ in unflattering photos, reading about the lives of people I haven’t seen since school and pretending to be more popular, hilarious and sociable than I actually am.

So I’ve decided to try this new fangled thing called Actually Having a Life, where I’ll go out and do things instead of pretending to go out and do things.

I’ve also invested in a good writing set. It’s not a touch screen though, so it might take me a while to work out how to use it.