If you know someone who sucks at Facebook, send this on

Is Facebook killing marriages, Yeoh Siew Hoon wonders? Well, it's certainly keeping a lot of people busy, even in China where it's not allowed.

I was having drinks the other evening with a male friend when he glared at me and said, "I think the hot topic this year is, will Facebook kill marriages?"

Since I was actually having thoughts of how to make the perfect longan martini - I brought some beautiful longans back from Haikou, the capital of Hainan island in China - his remark took me by surprise.

"What?" I spluttered.

"Last night, I asked my wife to come to bed and she said (this part he did it in quotation marks) "Wait, I am posting pictures". Posting pictures!" he swigged down his beer in disgust.

He is not alone in his frustration. According to an article in eMarketer, which quotes the March 2010 "Gadgetology Report" from consumer electronics site Retrevo, 48% of social media users log in to the sites either during the night or as soon as they wake up.

Other than marriages, I think Facebook can also be hazardous to family ties and friendships. The report also says that users under 25 were more likely to check or update their social network status after bedtime, with nearly one-fifth saying they did so anytime they woke up during the night.

Well, I have a 22-year-old niece who stays up till the wee hours of the morning on Facebook. She insists she is studying. She is also listening to music at the same time. "We are young, we can multi-task," she says, looking at me with pity.

Last month, while I was in China with no access to Facebook on the net, I started getting emails on my Blackberry that I had been tagged and comments started appearing like, "Wah! Is that really you?"

For three days, I had to wonder what the "really you" meant. Had someone posted a photo of me in a compromising position? Turned out a friend had posted an old photo of me in the 80s, looking like someone I don't recognize nor care to remember.

In China too, I was travelling with my photographer friend, Willy Foo, who I swore had Facebook-withdrawal symptoms for a different reason.

Willy is the most active Facebooker I know. He uses it for his business, Live Studios, very successfully. He tells me up to 60% of his business comes through Facebook. He posts vigorously and he places ads. His company specialises in live photography at events. He shoots, he posts and he tags. I think he's got more than 1,000 friends.

Well, in China, it's not that easy to access certain sites like Google, Facebook or YouTube and Willy was literally having panic attacks until one afternoon, he looked at me with a big grin and said, "By jove, I did it."

He had found a way to access Facebook through his iPhone. You would think he'd won the lottery.

Anyway, out of the blue this week, I got an email from someone pointing me to a comic on The Oatmeal on "How to suck at Facebook".

It's so good that I want to share it with everybody who knows somebody who is driving them crazy with their Facebook activities.

It divides users into several categories: The Gamer - the invites and updates will never stop; The Event Coordinator - they invite everyone to everything; The Desperate Marketer - Their idea of Facebook is to spam all their friends with ‘become a fan of (whatever)' requests; The Horrible Photo Tagger - they will tag anything regardless of whether or not it's something you want your family or co-workers to see; The Rash - this person will follow you around Facebook and comment on everything you do; and the Quiz Taker - you'd think everyone had gotten sick of these by now.

So if you know someone who fits any of these categories, send it on - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_suck