Social networking website Facebook encourage people to build "transient relationships" that can leave them traumatised and even suicidal when they collapse. I have concerns about the rise of individualism in society.

These sites encourage people to put too much emphasis on the number of friends they have rather than on the quality of their relationships.

People throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they're desolate. It's an all or nothing syndrome that you have to have in an attempt to shore up an identity, a collection of friends about whom you can talk and even boast. But friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it's right.

Archbishop Nichols said the internet and mobile phones were "dehumanising" community life and that relationships had been weakened by the decline in face-to-face meetings.

"I think there's a worry that an excessive use or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community.

"We're losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part of community life and living together."