COLUMN: Are you haunted by your Facebook timeline too..? - Nicola Farah

I mean, I still see the point of it, for the most part. I like that it keeps me up to date with people I don’t get to see that often, and love seeing big milestones reported - wedding photos, baby announcements, birthday parties and hen weekends - but I can’t imagine ever being interested in listening to you rant about who’s been talking about you behind your back. I don’t want to see a picture of the Sunday dinner you’ve just cooked, and definitely don’t care that it’s 7pm and you’re already ‘in your PJs watching Walking Dead with the besties.’ I’m also particularly sick of the annoying woman who frequently pops up on my timeline - and shall remain nameless - listing, for her hundreds of Facebook friends, the chores she’s managed to get done on her day off. Ya want a medal, love?

Why do I need to see photos of girls pouting with their friends on a night out? And why have they hardly got any clothes on?? Now I’m no prude, I had my fair share of revealing outfits back in the day and am all for women getting their legs out or showing a little cleavage - but both at the same time?!

So imagine my horror when, thanks to Facebook’s ‘On This Day So Many Years Ago...’ feature, I discovered that I was once one of those people. Yup. I too posted ridiculous, cryptic (possibly trying to be cute) statuses that don’t mean anything - things like: ‘Nik wonders if video really did kill the radio star,’ and pointless updates like: ‘Urgh - jus had me a sandwich wi some mayonnaise sneakily hidden in the middle.’ On September 5 2009, I am guilty of posting the status: ‘Saturday night in mi PJS wi a glass a wine....ohhhhh yeahhhh.....’

Every morning when these notifications pop up on my phone, I cringe. I used the word ‘mint’ far too often, call all my friends ‘babe,’ dropped letters from the ends of my words and embarrasingly referred to Barnsley as ‘tarn’ on more than one occasion.

And that’s what I need to bear in mind when I see these people, ten years my junior, acting - and dressing - like schmucks for the world to see, throwing about all the cool and current lingo and wearing outfits they will live to regret. Because we all did it, every last one of us, in some varying degree. Our parents hideous mistakes are hidden in dusty albums in the loft; ours are buried in our Facebook timelines. And at 22, when we wore bizarre outfits, dated idiots and thought everything we did was fascinating, we didn’t think about the day we’d be married with kids and all the evidence of our embarrasing adolesence would still exist online for the world to see.