Snapchat I leave to the young 'uns — they need somewhere where they can roam free without the oldies peering into their lives — but I've found Facebook in particular enormously useful to stay in touch with a broad range of people I have come to know through radio, public speaking and marathon running.
They are not intimate friends, but a lot of them are people I've met and liked and am interested in, and Facebook gives me the opportunity to stay in touch without the enormous investment in time and energy of maintaining close friendships.
When I visited my family in London, I wrote about how excited I was to be with my grandson when he celebrated his first birthday and hundreds commented on my post, with their own long-distance grandparent experiences.
It makes for a lovely community and I've been very lucky in that I only recall two nasty people in the five years I've been on Facey. They were swiftly blocked and now I have a lovely virtual community of like-minded souls.
The community were looking forward to photos of my grandson, Bart, while I was in London, but a few days into my stay, the young paterfamilias — aka my son-in-law — told me he and my daughter, Kate, didn't want photos of Bart on social media.
He said you just couldn't tell the consequences of sharing information on Facebook and other social media platforms — and this was before the Cambridge Analytica data mining debacle.
I acquiesced immediately; his family, his rules, although I admit I was sorely disappointed. What grandmother doesn't love sharing photos of her beautiful grandchildren?
But anyone who mattered to Bart got personal emails with accompanying photos and videos. And the lovely people — strangers to my daughter but who had followed our family for years — who took the time to send handknitted garments and presents when Bart was born — had a thank you card and a photo of the baby.
He just didn't feel comfortable sharing information about his son on public platforms when he had no idea what the long-term consequences might be.
He's right. I've always said, when people ring me on talkback, it's not government agencies we have to be wary of when it comes to spying. We share so much about ourselves and our lives the GCSB will probably be obsolete in a few years.
Modern spies are our fellow citizens. Smartphones in hand, they will record — and make public — any perceived transgression.
So although the scale of the Facebook data-mining was mind-boggling, I suppose I've always known our openness and naivety would come with a cost.
Since the news broke of the data mining, I've learned a lot more about Facebook's privacy and security settings and deleted a lot of apps I didn't know were there.
And I'm glad my son-in-law was proactive in protecting his son.
Bart can decide for himself if he wants to have an online identity once he's old enough.
And maybe, by that time, Mark Zuckerberg will have worked out a way to protect the rights and the interests of the community that made him a billionaire.
• Kerre McIvor's Sunday Sessions is on NewstalkZB today, 9am-noon.
