A few years ago, when such a thing still seemed unusual, I found out through Facebook that a friend was pregnant. As soon as I'd fired off a message of congratulation, however, I wondered if I'd overinterpreted what she'd said. Perhaps 'is eating jaffa cakes for two' simply meant she was eating a lot of Jaffa Cakes. So I sent another message apologising for the previous one, if she wasn't in fact pregnant, merely hungry and out of decent snacks. I was right the first time, as it happens, but I often find it hard to judge how serious people are being on sites like Facebook and Twitter, generally assuming (or hoping) that they're being less serious than they in fact are. So it's a relief to learn, from Ilana Gershon's The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media (Cornell, £14.95), that I'm not the only one.

LRB 7 October 2010 | PDF Download