When I returned home to Singapore during the recent holidays, one of the first things I did was to re-access my Facebook account. I had been looking forward to reconnecting with people at home and abroad. I wanted to see what everyone was up to, as well as to let everyone know what was going on in my life.

But after a few minutes scrolling down the thumbnail photos and snapshot sentences, I was brought back to the brutal reality of the virtual world - nobody missed me during my yearlong absence from the site.

Even in China, it can be increasingly easy to get caught up in the superficiality of online social networking. The number of Chinese social networking service (SNS) users has already surpassed 200 million, growing at nearly 20 percent within the year, the China Internet Network Information Center reported.