Someone who believes this is the way forward is Michael, whose name has been changed after asking to remain anonymous. He never had social media at school, but now aged 22, uses Instagram to promote his photography-based business.

He uses an old iPhone 6s solely for this purpose, so Instagram doesn’t collect information from his actual phone, saying “it’s creepy that they could work out you were looking at shoes and then you’ll see an ad for shoes”.

He tells me that his school’s lessons on cyberbullying and privacy policies led to his original decision to stay away from social media. “They talked a lot about cyberbullying, and how people can hurt you, and like, just generally make you feel bad”.

Ofcom found one in five 12 to 15 year olds have experienced bullying, with one in eight bullied on social media. But as he and his friends didn’t use Facebook, he’s not sure if anyone was cyber-bullied in his year group. “I know people were bullied in school, like face to face, so I don’t know if that extended online as well, but people were always getting into punching fights”.

He speaks in a monotonous tone, explaining why cyberbullying is worse than the physical kind. “If someone punches you you can put ice on it, but cyberbullying can get inside your head, and just take over because it can lead to things like anxiety and depression. A physical fight can’t do that. It’s just a cut, it’s just a scratch, and you’ll get better.”

When Marianna ends her call with her boyfriend, she sits back down opposite me. “Ok, what were we talking about?” forgetting where we left off after only a few minutes on the phone. Once we’re back on track, she begins talking about WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which she uses more than traditional SMS texts. “With a text you can’t see if the person’s read it, unless you have iMessage,” she explains, liking WhatsApp’s feature that notifies contacts when you’re online, and when you’ve read their message.

The biggest reason to use these apps is because they’re free, using the phone’s internet connection to send messages and make phone calls, but not everyone, including myself, uses it. “A lot of people don’t use WhatsApp, so I’ll just message them from Messenger,” Marianna says.

But everyone that has these apps has a mobile phone, so couldn’t everyone use texts instead?

I asked her how many messages she would receive from all these apps in a day. “I wouldn’t say like every minute I’m probably not as bad as Kassie, but I do get a few messages a day, mostly from Instagram and Messenger.”

Kassie is Marianna’s 19 year old sister, who I had the chance to talk to a couple of days later. She works as a teaching assistant in a nursery back in Cyprus, but even when she’s working, her phone doesn’t stop buzzing.

“I get a message from Messenger every five minutes. Instagram, maybe like three times a day, but it’s mostly Messenger.” Just listening to her made my heart rate rise. I couldn’t imagine receiving that many messages, and having to respond to each of them.

Kelly and Anton are parents to two year old Zach, and are expecting a little girl in August. They have full-time jobs as a facilities manager and a mechanic, but parenting seems to come naturally to both of them.

I had the chance to speak to them one evening after they put Zach down for the night. After explaining how she only uses Facebook and Instagram - not understanding the point of Twitter and Snapchat - Kelly realised that she uses WhatsApp to talk to everyone except her husband.

“I think it’s because we don’t usually need to know if one of us has read the message” Anton said.

“No it’s not that,” Kelly says, explaining Anton is part of a lads group chat. “There’s nine boys in it, and all they do is message each other stupid photos, his WhatsApp is just mental. So if I were to send Anton a WhatsApp, my one WhatsApp would get lost in his group chat, so he wouldn’t read it.” I understand her logic after witnessing people’s phones constantly light up with group chat messages, wondering how they cope.

As parents, they also expressed their concerns about educating children on online safety. “I think if they got taught how to be smart on social media, I feel like it would need to be told later, because the later it gets told, the less involvement you’re giving the child. If you tell a child about something, they want to do it.” Anton explained.

“But primary school scares me, because I’d like to think there’s some kids in primary school that have never heard of Snapchat, or the rarer ones,” Kelly admits. It’s a nice thought, but kids pick up on more than we give them credit for. Kelly and Anton both use social media everyday, so there’s a chance Zach knows the word Instagram already.

They joined Facebook in 2007 when they were 19, the same age they started dating, but admit it’s unlikely Zach would be able to wait that long.

“The pressure around kids in school these days, if one person doesn’t have it - I don’t know, I don’t want him to be singled out for not having social media, but I would hate him to have it. I would need his password so I can log in and monitor his posts.” Kelly laughs admitting she would be ‘that’ mum.

“But I’m a hundred percent petrified because I know that social media has changed, even in the 10 years or so that I’ve been using it. When I first joined Facebook it was just all nice things. Now there’s so much bullying, there’s so much competition, it’s just so much pressure.”

I was aware of this pressure at school. A number of my friends tried to make me join Instagram because I enjoyed photography, but I argued that once I post a photo it belongs to Facebook, and anyone could use it without my permission.

Another friend also promised by the end of the school year I would be on a social media platform. When July came around, she had disabled her Facebook account, and deleted Snapchat.

Anton was scrolling through Instagram on his phone as I spoke to Kelly, who told me she often falls into the “Instagram hole”, intending to briefly check the app, only to put her phone down an hour later. But despite the addictive traits of social media working on them, they are extremely aware of its dangers, and are concerned about how it will change as Zach grows up.

“Have you ever watched Black Mirror?” Anton asked me. I hadn’t, and he began explaining an episode called Nosedive, which follows the main character, Lacie, in a world where people’s social status is decided by a ranking system, where people rate their interaction with others. Lacie ends up obsessing over her ratings to move up the classes, and Kelly explains that as her score increases, she’s able to buy certain things in life. “Like you can buy a certain house or property on a street because you have a certain social media score. I genuinely think that’s the way social media will be.”

Considering George Orwell and Ray Bradbury attempted to predict the future in their sci-fi novels 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 around 70 years ago, it’s unsurprising television and film are doing the same. Black Mirror’s attempt at predicting the future manipulates the number-orientated world of social media, Kelly mentioning that when she first joined Facebook, it was about how many friends you had.

“It was a number game” Anton added, and this hasn’t disappeared, with Instagram users constantly comparing the number of followers they have, or likes they receive on a photo. I have often overheard teenagers and adults discuss their follower count, and wonder what it actually means in reality.

Michael currently has 50 followers, after joining only a month ago, whilst Marianna has 226. When I asked Kassie, she said “a thousand and something? I don’t know, something like that”, waving her hand around as if she doesn’t care. But she has exactly 1,498 followers.

She must care. She posts pictures mostly of herself and friends, and uses Instagram stories (which Marianna explained to me) to inform her followers on what she’s been doing throughout the day, sharing her life with all 1,498 of them.

“I’m terrible with a lot of my friends” Kelly says. “I don’t necessarily text them, or if I’ve not spoken to them for a couple of months I’m terrible for just being like, ‘oh how are you hope you’re good’ kind of thing. Whereas it’s a good way to just - ”

Anton cuts her off and laughs. “Not speak to each other?”

“It’s a good way to not speak to people but still know what each other are doing in our lives. To still know that they’re ok and see what they’re up to without having a conversation,” explains Kelly.

Does this not prove Facebook’s mission to “bring the world closer together” has been successful? People that might not have stayed in touch if they didn’t have a platform to do so, have.

Kelly and Anton have kept in contact with old school friends through Facebook, whilst Kassie met up with her friends in Sheffield because she still speaks to them on Instagram. If there’s one thing social media is good at, it’s this, and often makes me think about signing up.

“It can also enrich your life with fun things,” Anton explains, discovering Peppa Pig World from mums Kelly follows on Instagram. “That’s one of the things we’ve now organised because Zach would enjoy it”.

Many people use Instagram for the same purpose, but other than recommending family activities, it also forms trends and ‘Instagrammable’ places to visit, one aspect of the platform I have struggled to understand. The idea of going somewhere for the main purpose of taking Instagram-worthy photos, rather than for what the event has to offer, doesn’t make much sense. It’s a new form of socialising that Instagram has created, weaving itself into aspects of our lives that never used to require it.

Michael emailed me a few weeks after I met with him, informing me he deleted Instagram after Facebook automatically made him a page when he tried creating a business Instagram account. To access the page he had to create a Facebook profile, where his name, birthday, gender, phone number and a passport-style photo are mandatory. Knowing this information won’t be protected, Michael refused to sign up, and deleted Instagram in the hope of removing the Facebook page with it.

If someone wants to delete a Facebook page but don’t have an account, Facebook suggests asking a friend who does to do it for them. There’s no ‘contact us’ page, email address, or customer service phone number, only a help centre that doesn’t answer every question.

Michael became associated with a platform he had no intention of joining, and with no easy way to solve the issue through Instagram, felt Facebook had pushed him into a corner.

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It seems privacy policies need to change, but Kelly suggested an improvement to how platforms are used. “If you could put a word in you don’t have to see, that would maybe filter a lot of things out,” she explained. “I’d like to think you would be able to do that”.

But Marianna didn’t think anything needed changing. “But maybe I need to limit myself from using it too much,” she laughs, saying the only reason she would stop using social media would be if there was an apocalypse. It’s engrained into her life so much that she can’t imagine living without it. But 12 years ago, she did.

I sit at my laptop and Google Facebook. I click on their site, and read ‘sign up’. They ask for my full name, email, gender and birthday. Why do they need my birthday? “To make sure you get the right Facebook experience for your age” Facebook says.

I make a new tab and Google Instagram. I click on their site, and read ‘sign up’. They ask for my full name, email, a username and password. I pause, watching the vibrant pictures to the left of the screen change and draw me into their world.