Much has been said over the past few years about productivity decline and shortening attention spans.

Forced to spend a few months sitting at home with a reconstructed right shoulder, the boredom was regularly swatted away with reading and TV watching. I must have read 200 books and watched 500 movies or TV episodes in six months.

One thing I had less of was social media.

Working at my office desk there were constant disruptions: people marching in, emails, texts, ringing phones (I had two – a desk phone and a mobile). The internet is only one thing, but it has managed to split itself into hundreds of little hornets, all vying for your attention.

Some people text, some email, others prefer Messenger, Whatsapp or Slack and so on. There are new ones every year.

Electronic messages kept popping up on my screen for a second or two. You felt you needed to stop what you were doing, in case it was important, to try and find whatever it was. The latter was not an easy feat and could take up to five minutes each time.

When Facebook threatened me with the need for two-factor authentication, because “I had the potential of reaching millions of people” – hmm, seriously, me with less than 100 FB friends – I was told to do it or else.

Obliging, I found the code supplied did not work, so after a while I decided to head Mr Zuckerberg off – and deleted my account. What bliss!

I knew Facebook was enormously distracting but the peace and quiet that ensued after deleting my account was pure bliss. Add to that the pleasure of being able to tell people, “No I do not do Facebook any more”.

If you want to reach me, you will have to come talk to me in person.

FB has dropped lots of important features, such as fact checking, and they keep stealing my articles. It has also deprived many people of their income by its willy-nilly rules.

It seems we rely way too much on the internet, and in particular on huge overseas tech giants, who take all our money but are too far removed both literally and figuratively to be held accountable – ever – by poor little us.

Internet: when a blessing becomes a curse. Did you know that whatever you put on the internet will be there forever. You have no way of knowing who has swiped your information and family photos and used them for ill-gain.

There are plenty of horror stories already about people changing your article into something opposite to what you were writing about, or using your grandkids pics in a porn movie. As soon as you go electronic you turn over control to Mr or Miss Anonymous. It will never be yours again.

The internet seems to rule our lives and our businesses. Perhaps it is time to take back control. Put down your gadget and go for a walk, talk to your neighbour over the fence, in the street, rather than via an app.