Whether it's a means of staying in touch with old friends or of making new enemies, Facebook -- which celebrates its 7th birthday in 2011 -- is impossible to ignore... In June an Irish MEP called for Facebook to be regulated as a health hazard, in the same way as alcohol and drugs. It's not hard to see why. According to experts at top addiction clinic, The Priory, one in ten of us is in danger of becoming addicted to Facebook, and in need of psychiatric help to recover. We log on compulsively to keep tabs on our friends (and, more importantly, our enemies), we obsessively acquire 'friends', even though we might not actually know them and we develop damaging insecurities as a result of the 'perfect' selves our 'friends' portray, believing that our own lives don't measure up. Worst of all, we're so busy leading our virtual lives that we forget to lead our actual ones. So what makes this social networking site so addictively popular? Well, it's the way FB has extended into every corner of our lives, changing the way we interact with one another. This book takes a lighthearted look at the site with a mixture of real-life stories, expert comment and useful tips.

Tammy Cohen (who also writes as Tamar Cohen) is a freelance journalist writing for national magazines and newspapers. After a late start, she has now written seven novels - The Mistress's Revenge, The War of the Wives, Someone Else's Wedding, The Broken, Dying For Christmas, First One Missing and When She Was Bad - all published by Doubleday/Black Swan. She is a member of the Killer Women crime writing collective and lives in North London with her partner and three (nearly) grown children, plus one very badly behaved dog.