Social historians in years to come will have an easy ride. All they’ll need is a database of Twitter comments.

Twitter users that have been online over Christmas have shared a huge amount of information with each other the Christmas period. It’s mostly been exchanges of festive goodwill and nonsense about Turkey cooking times. But I’ve also spotted some fairly intimate disclosures about family, partners and children. It concerns me.

I’ve young children some of whom use the Internet regularly. They have all been taught safe internet usage at home and at school to the point that it has almost become a creed. Lesson one: there are some bad people on the Internet. Lesson two: never share personal information online.

I showed Facebook and Twitter to my 10-year daughter this morning (the irony of sharing information about my family in a post about privacy hasn’t escaped me). She couldn’t understand the contradiction between what she’s been taught about personal privacy online at school and the information that people were sharing publicly. I’m lost for an explanation.

This is by no means a new issue. It would take no more than a few hours to build up very detailed profiles of some Twitter users. In fact Andrew Smith did this for BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones in April.

Cellan-Jones’ Twitter usage is becoming the norm. High profile and high net worth individuals are sharing information on social networks that could be potent if abused or misused.

There’s a second issue. We’ve all become minor celebrities in our lives. As we broadcast minute by minute updates of the progress of our Christmas lunches we have inadvertently given permission for people to watch and share. And how does this impact our real lives?

Has this Christmas period shown that we are all too busy updating our social networks that we’re no longer fully participating in our real lives?

Tags: children, intimacy, online, privacy, social networks