This was mentioned about a year ago by Pope Benedict, and a number of social commentators have said the same thing. Are they right?

Well, it's certainly true that all these media give anyone who wants to talk about themselves a platform. They do make it easy just to give a long running commentary about very small details of your life, in a way that wasn't really possible before. And if you get even a few followers or likes, that can encourage you to think these small details of your life are more interesting than they really are.

But is that the fault of the media or the people who use them? Any new medium is used in both good and bad ways. A good example is last summer's riots - these were made much worse by the news spreading on Twitter, but then the cleanup operation was also organised largely through the same medium. Basically, you can use these media to say and do interesting, useful things or to witter on about what you had for breakfast this morning - the medium is what we make it.