THESE days no event of note takes place in many people’s lives without it being accompanied by a photo on social media.

The photo – a selfie or a picture taken by someone else of an individual or group – is a kind of validation, not only that the event happened but that it’s socially acceptable.

We now take photos of ourselves and others at every possible moment to demonstrate to the world how popular/gregarious/fun/sociable etc we are. In fact, for some people, no event is unaccompanied by a picture on Facebook.

How did we get to this point? If, 10 years ago, we had said we would be doing this kind of thing regularly, we’d have laughed at the very idea. Taking pictures of ourselves eating in restaurants or laughing with friends and then publishing them for the whole world to see? Are you mad?

Today, so obsessed are we by recording every piece of daily minutae on social media, often accompanied by a photo, that there are even special sticks for holding our mobile phone to take a better shot.

I know, it’s all a bit of fun and why am I being so grumpy about it? Well, my concern is not so much about the sociable photos we publish of ourselves but those of our young children.

We live in evil times when paedophiles use modern technology to both access images of children for sexual gratification and to make contact with them online.

Those innocent pictures of our children and grandchildren enjoying playing in the garden, swimming in a holiday pool or just having fun can be used for much more sinister purposes and shared by perverts.

The power of the picture also makes daredevil stunts and achievements seem much more “normal” for everyone. A British backpacker who plunged 100 feet to her death in an Australian canyon is thought to have been posing for a “cliffhanger” photo similar to one on the website of the travel company organising her tour. Walkers regularly posed on the ledge where she died, just to get a better picture.

We all love to see photos of friends and family and there are ways to protect your privacy on social media. But, increasingly, people are not bothering with these safeguards so they can boast about their social life to Facebook “friends”. It’s just sad that we really feel the need to do this.