Anybody meeting my client Anna for the first time would be forgiven for thinking she has a perfect life. She is 29, slim, attractive, well-educated and rapidly climbing the career ladder as a solicitor with a dynamic City firm.
Yet, her whole demeanour is nothing more than a well-constructed façade.
Rather than spending her evenings at a fashionable restaurant or gossiping at a bar, Anna spends up to five hours a night on her laptop — obsessively tracking the lives of her ex-boyfriend, old friends and acquaintances and work colleagues. When she isn't glued to Facebook, Friends Reunited or blogs, she is trawling through gossip websites.
Voyeuristic monitoring
At weekends, when Anna has more time on her hands, it's not unusual for her to devote seven-hour sessions to her voyeuristic monitoring of people she is convinced are all leading more exciting and fulfilling lives than she is.
So when I saw a report recently on new research linking addictive internet use with depression, I wasn't surprised. The study found that spending too long online can expose a "dark side". Those who didn't previously suffer from depression were made to feel gloomy and vulnerable and those who did often logged off feeling worse. Sadly, it confirmed a growing trend I've witnessed first-hand over the past ten years in my work as a life coach and agony aunt.
There appears to be a direct relationship between spending more time online and feeling less happy about life, along with an increased risk of addiction to the internet.
Exact opposite
Let's be honest, though, when most of us think of the stereotypical sad and lonely person who gets addicted to surfing the net, we think of a geeky man who probably doesn't have refined social skills or a high "desirability" rating. He seeks solace in vicarious thrills or visiting chat rooms.
But in my experience, the people who are falling victim to internet-led addiction and depression are smart, savvy, career women such as Anna — and the damaging effects of spending increasing hours online are far more insidious than you can imagine.
Anna initially consulted me about a relationship issue — she had been finding it difficult to get over the man she called the "love of her life", who had broken up with her a year earlier.
It soon became obvious that she was spending too much time on the internet. She confessed that the more time she spent on social networking sites, the stronger her desire grew to keep up with how everyone else was spending their time. She said it seemed a darned sight more interesting and fun than what she was up to. The irony was that she wasn't contacting these people by compulsively following them. Anna said she hadn't wanted to go out with friends because she feared she would bore them by droning on about her break-up.
Unfortunately, by isolating herself, she compounded the root of the problem, further damaging her fragile self-confidence. The further irony is that you can never trust the way people depict their social lives on such sites. Yet, someone vulnerable will fall for it hook, line and sinker.
You might think it extraordinary that she wasn't actually contacting people she knew — choosing to just watch their lives play out across the pages of a site.
But this fits in with the pattern of emotional detachment that many who spend too much time on the internet begin to feel: that they're no longer part of this vibrant community and are increasingly isolated from real life.
What was the upshot of all this time spent on her laptop? I'll tell you — she was feeling even worse than after the initial break-up and with a growing loneliness that she said she had never experienced previously.
She described it as an ever-increasing "black hole" inside of her. The more she tried to fill it — by seeing what was happening in other people's lives — the bigger it grew. Yet Anna hated it when she couldn't spend as much time as she wanted to on these sites.
Sense of detachment
Another case in point is Sarah, 31, whose overuse of the internet started with that sense of detachment from her normal group of friends, after moving cities for a promotion in the TV industry.
Arriving in London having been based in Wales, Sarah was initially excited by the prospect of a new job in a new city. However, long working hours meant she was so shattered when occasionally she had time off, that she rarely took advantage and went back to Wales. If you end up out of touch with your friends and too busy to make new ones, it's all too easy to hunch over your laptop for hours at a time. She found herself trawling fashion and social networking sites.
She'd peek at what her old friends were getting up to and also what her new colleagues were doing in their spare time — and felt incredibly lonely.
Obviously, the internet has transformed the way we communicate and has some tremendous benefits but it will never be a substitute for real relationships or for seeking face-to-face solace in difficult times.
Low self-esteem
The common thread linking these women was a set of circumstances that damaged their self-esteem and confidence in their own way.
The first thing is to reconnect with someone you trust and let them know you're lonely.
Then it's important to start spending time with people you like. It may mean reconnecting with old friends or developing new friendships.
When your days are a little less punishing, you're less likely to seek stress relief in some supposedly "harmless" internet surfing. Only then will you realise a real life is always more rewarding than a virtual one.
