It can be great for staying in touch with people you haven’t seen for ages but at the same time becoming a substitute for actually seeing them.

I propose a new social media app. Let’s call it ‘Vicii’. The idea would be that you only follow your actual friends on it and that you set yourself a period, maximum 1 year that you must instigate some sort of contact with them or the app permanently blocks that connection automatically.

The impetus from the user is then to also maintain some sort of actual social life alongside the digital ones. The app would use all sorts of evidence without invading privacy or tracking. For example you might link it to your Zoom account and then use a video chat as evidence or submit a photograph of you and others which it uses to confirm you were in the vicinity of by way of facial recognition of images you already uploaded.

The app would fund itself through a credit system whereby you top up your account and then it charges you 1c for a text post, 2c for an image and 5c for a video.

All the benefits; none of the drawbacks.