Social media is hardly new – it’s been hanging about since the '70s in the form of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), AOL and CompuServe. Those social messages may have been transmitted at speeds that today many would compare with glaciers shifting on the poles, but they still connected people with similar interests from across the globe. Today, social media's landscape is shadowed by the giant Like of Facebook and its billions of users sharing thoughts, ideas and rants and dreams. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest stand side by side, leaving equally large shadows beside the tiny pitter-pattering feet of the increasing array of niche social networks dancing like so many children in the sand. It's a smorgasbord of interaction and emotion. It's also a graveyard, the bodies of dead careers and reputations dragging along in the wake of bonhomie and breakfast.

"What you do and say on social media really is like a tattoo – it will stay with you forever," says Tamsyn De Beer, social media law consultant and co-author of Don't Film Yourself Having Sex. "There's a very real possibility that what you put up on your profile last year could have a detrimental impact on your future job prospects."