Way back then you had a page, and people would come to your page to see your status. Your status would be something like "is not looking forward to having to mow the lawn", or "can't wait to see The Hurt Locker''.

It might be hard to believe, but some of us were unconvinced we needed this in our lives. We thought ''why would anyone need to visit my page, however cool I've dressed it up with pictures and stuff? Isn't this whole thing a bit, you know, narcissistic?".

But we'd be persuaded by how much fun our colleagues were having posting comments on each other's pages in random languages like Esperanto or binary code, so we'd sign up too. It was fear of missing out, not yet known as #FOMO.

If someone was going to ask if we were up for a beer tonight (Biero i-vespere?), we'd want to be able to jump on an online translater and reply by covering their page in the 0s and 1s of binary to say "sure, Filthy McFadden's?". Ah, good times.

I was thinking this week of those early days before newsfeed and all-powerful algorithms. What got me there wasn't the latest news of some malign influence of Facebook or Twitter, nor the story I saw in one of these feeds about a Perth Instagram model now claiming to make $30,000 a day from people watching her do squats at the gym. What a time to be alive.

No, it was the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, and my own shock and grief at it. For a moment I'd felt the impulse to post online a photo of my family out the front in happier times. But I stopped quickly enough to say, "no mate, why would you do that?''.

When some 13 million people visit the cathedral each year, pose for photos, get hassled by gypsies, did I really need to contribute my own #nowords?

I should stress, before anyone's offended, I'm not criticising anyone who did respond that way. They were, no doubt, trying sincerely to convey their distress by emphasising the place's connection to them, however fleeting. Please, cathedral-photo-posting friends, it's not you, it's me. This is my over-thinking of this moment, and it speaks only to the conflict I feel about social media these days and the pitfalls we all face.

Post too much about a social issue, you can be committing the crime of virtue signalling. Too may pics of your kids or kitten, that makes you a bore. Close up shots of that weird rash, that's over-sharing. Post too many selfies, well, there's plenty of articles out there to advise you may well be a psychopath.

But then again, what if you don't change your profile picture in support of a worthy cause, or write happy birthday to your cousin, does that show you don't care, you selfish monster?

So as I do the boring thing of musing whether to #deletefacebook, I ask myself what would I gain if I left it all behind?

Time to pour into other apps, perhaps. There's an insistent green bird on my homescreen that really wants me to learn Italian.

More time to read books. That'd please my wife. She really wants me to share her appreciation for whatever she's just read in her book club. Not to spite her, but to her frustration, I only seem to pick up one or two books a year, usually some dense 900-page historical fiction that she knows, I know, we all know, will take me at least six months to read with the three minutes of brain activity I tend to spare for reading in bed. "Honey, I promise I'll get to Boy Swallows Universe as soon as I get through Shogun."

Maybe if I quit my social media accounts I'd just find some more inner calm, like that techie-turned-minimalist-vegan mate of mine who deleted everything, which means I now only see he's alive in the background of pics on his wife's Facebook page. I do envy him being oblivious to some of the horrid things you see said on social media, and unaware of the virtuous pile-on du jour.

I'd miss some things. I'd definitely miss seeing friends and their families doing nice things, especially travelling. I don't subscribe to the idea that posting holiday pics is a bore. I've made plans around places I've seen in people's feeds. So keep it up, friends.

I would miss those 'on this day' anniversary posts that remind me of something I posted of my kids doing something cute some years ago. That remains a nice intrusion in my day, even if I'm now quite rarely feeding new material into this record of my life.

But when weighing up whether to stay or go, is this enough? Or as they would say in Esperanto, Cu suficas?