The quickest way these days to establish your intellectual and moral superiority is to declare that you do not have a Facebook account. The other option is to say something scathing about the Kardashians (alternatively, insert locally relevant celebrity here), but ANYONE can say scathing things about the Kardashians, while only a select group is without a Facebook account. In the age of the Internet, staying away from social media signifies true nobility of spirit.

If you’ve made the mistake of getting involved, you can redeem yourself somewhat by expressing your disdain towards social media in general or some platforms in particular. I used to experience a vague sense of guilt when I interacted with people who think like that. So I had my rational arguments ready: I joined Facebook when my daughter was born and I didn’t get out much and now, living abroad, I use it to keep in touch with friends and Estonian life; I need Instagram for the blog and following Twitter is a must for my work, etc, etc.

All this is true, but at some point I realised that I’m apologising for the fact that I use social media and I didn’t mean to. Because, shocking as it is, I LIKE social media. I love scrolling through my Facebook feed to see what people are doing (I am fond of these people!), I love to see what skincare obsessives are using on Instagram, I love to discover new books on Goodreads, I love the wit on Reddit, I love the perfume forum I visit every single day to check what fragrance people are wearing in Brazil or New Zealand or Sweden – it’s always a special thrill to discover you have a scent twin somewhere far away. I don’t particularly love Twitter, but this is a matter of personal preference, not a value judgement.

If anything, I wish these places had existed sooner. When I was a teenager, I would have loved to see what other teens were reading via Instagram – there is a very lively community of YA readers on ‘bookstagram’. And of adult readers, for that matter. For long periods of my life I had nobody to talk to about things I had a deep interest in. In real life, it’s still true for some things, but one can always find people with similar interests on the Internet.

Every innovation, every new technology has downsides and we need to learn how to adjust and how to mitigate them. I’m not denying that some of these issues are serious– I just don’t have the inclination and space to address them here. Yes, the Internet can be dangerous and seductive. Much like life. But what irritates me deeply is when people blame our own shortcomings on technology: has social media made us shallow and vain and bullying? Of course not. We’ve always been like that, it’s just more visible now and more people have the resources to indulge. No tool is evil per se* and to claim otherwise is to refuse to take responsibility for our own actions.

I also get extremely annoyed when people invent non-existent problems to get indignant about. Does anyone honestly know a sane person who thinks he has 700 close friends because he has 700 friends on Facebook? Of course nothing replaces true, real life friendships, but does it mean you are not allowed to connect with people in other ways? In real life, we have acquaintances and colleagues we would maybe not call friends, but whose company we enjoy and who enrich our lives immeasurably. The same is true for online friends, some of whom might become real life friends if the stars align. (I also get much joy from following Lupita Nyong’o and Neil Gaiman and Tom Holland, people that I unfortunately have no other way to befriend.)

I’m the first to admit I should spend a little less time with my iPad and I am working on this – setting aside time slots for my social media use rather than being responsive 24/7; not interrupting my e-book reading to check e-mails or Google random stuff; finding more productive ways of filling an unexpected 30-minute lull than staring at my phone. I also limit the number of places where I’m present and engaged, so my Pinterest and LinkedIn accounts are abandoned and I’m staying away from Snapchat.

But the reason I do this is not because I think social media is evil, but because moderation and balance seem like good ideas in most things. I believe the comparison with food is apt – our problems with it come not from the fact that food is bad, but from the fact there is suddenly so much of it and instead of enjoying it in a reasonable way, we invent insane rules and intolerances and go on diets and generally mess it up. And again, people who manage to abstain from eating almost entirely, seem to believe this is a manifestation of their moral value. Bearing this in mind, I’m now going to have a bowl of pasta and tweet something.

*Or vice versa – people tend to think that reading books is always positive and educational. As a long time obsessive reader of trashy fantasy, I can assure you that books are not by default superior to any other mode of communication. Everything depends on the content and the context. Is a New Yorker article really somehow less good journalism because I find it through Twitter? Is the Third Symphony of Brahms truly less sublime because I listen to it on Youtube?