I REMEMBER more than ten years ago now when Facebook was still a fairly new thing. At the time I hated it and it caused endless arguments in our family. Two of my then teenage daughters seemed to talk about nothing else. Facebook was present at the dinner table, on the way home from school, all through the evening and last thing at night. I could not see how this could in any way be a good thing.

Since then of course the world of social media has moved on. The younger generation have very little interest Facebook now and have moved on to other, more exciting social media platforms.

Being on Facebook is no longer trendy or fashionable and it is middle aged people like me who have come to find its uses. In my personal opinion, one of the biggest opportunities Facebook offers is the capacity to make new friendships.

We know that many people of all ages struggle with feelings of loneliness and isolation these days. Feeling lonely can feel like one of the hardest things to overcome - and meeting new people with similar interests can feel nigh on impossible once you are past the age of school or higher education.

What Facebook offers, however, is a shortcut to connecting with people with whom you have something in common. Take my husband. He is retired, in his seventies and is originally from Finland. Before moving with me to this country two years ago he did not know anyone. As a biologist he had a particular interest in butterflies and moths.

For my part, other than occasionally taking a picture of a pretty butterfly on a sunny day, this is a passion of his which I absolutely do not share. However, despite this being a niche hobby, through Facebook he managed to find local groups of people sharing the same passion.

In this way he has met people he resonates with and who have now become close friends in the real world as well. In my case I also arrived in Devon knowing no one here at all and having left all my friends behind in Finland. As I have no family in this country other than my own children, friendships have always been very important to me.

There are times when I have wondered whether I would find new friends here in the UK. Because I am currently in the process of writing a book, I recently joined a Facebook group for people also involved in the writing process. Although everyone in the group is writing about entirely different subject matter, we all had one thing in common – a love of writing itself and the intention of turning our writing into a book.

The group was an international one, but I still found several people within it who live close by. We are now planning to meet up face to face and I am hopeful that some new friendships will develop in this way because of our shared interest in writing.

In the same way, when I lived in Finland I set up a Facebook group for people interested in social dancing and wanting to make new friends. We quickly started getting together in person and many of those people have become some of my closest friends – one was the best man for our wedding in 2019! That particular group now has over 2500 members and people still use it to meet new people and expand their social network.

I am not suggesting for a minute that anyone who is strongly suspicious of social media should suddenly become transfixed to a screen every hour of the day and start watching cat videos. However if used in the right way, Facebook can be an extremely useful tool in connecting people who share joint interests but might not ever come across each other in any other way.

Once those first connections are made, these friendships can then be allowed to develop in the real world wherever geography allows. Loneliness is something which can happen to any of us at any time. In my view the more opportunities we have to meet like-minded people and develop genuine and lasting friendships the better that will be for all of us.