Social media offers a convenient way to stay in touch with each others’ lives, but perhaps we’re a little too in touch. Step aside, Information Age. We’re in the Age of Too Much Information (TMI). We’ve turned a convenient way to say “hello” into a constantly-updated online diary, featuring the most inane details of our lives – from photographs of that intended-to-make-your-friends-envious holiday, to our most recently consumed meals.

This, when you think about it, is surprising. For a society whose motto seems to quite often be: ‘I want what I want, and I want it now’, we spend an awful lot of time photographing and videotaping experiences, to (hopefully) enjoy them at a later date.

Instant gratification, at least as far as enjoying a meal, a holiday or even a live concert goes, has been put on the back burner. It’s not enough for you to have your cake, and eat it, too: you have to ensure that your online social hub of disturbingly labelled “followers” has a front row ticket to the experience. After all, it would be a shame if they couldn’t collectively share a stab of annoyance as they catch sight of that crème brûlée you’re about to demolish, while they feast on some reheated frozen pizza, grumble, and continue to scroll down their newsfeed.

If you’re in your twenties, you’ve probably also noticed the surge of life events that have begun to pop up on your newsfeed every couple of days. In a global epidemic of sorts, everyone appears to either be getting engaged, married, or having a baby. While most of the sensible amongst these updaters tend to wait a week or two after the event before they share this with the rest of the world, there appears to be an interesting sub-category: the ones who update on-the-go, as if live-tweeting the event.

It isn’t just the cringeworthiness of living out your private moments in a public charade of sorts, it’s the thought process that forces you to disengage from the event as it’s taking place, pull out your smartphone, and update your status. That’s what’s troubling. It’s almost as if something isn’t official until it’s been witnessed by your social media followers (or stalkers, as the case might be).

Worrying as all of the above might be, the side effects of oversharing are undeniably chuckleworthy. People you hardly ever said more than hello to in school or college seem to suddenly want to be your friend (albeit virtually), and not wanting to appear rude, or knowing you’re going to dodge them in Sainsbury’s, you unwillingly click “accept”.

Shakespeare couldn’t have put it better when he noted that “all the world’s a stage/ And all the men and women merely players”. Yet even he couldn’t have imagined twenty-somethings orchestrating the following scene: you bump into X, whom you barely know, at a bar. Yet, of course, courtesy of Facebook, you already know where X went to high school and college and who they were dating two years ago. The unspoken, unwritten, yet widely observed rules of online stalking, however, prohibit you from declaring prior knowledge. So instead you nod along, take a sip of your drink, and casually steer the conversation in that direction: duly feigning surprise when they tell you what Facebook told you last week.

We tend to live rather publicly, yet can’t quite stop ourselves from being creeped out by how much the people we barely know seem to know about our lives. I guess in the end, you can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave.