Facebook is still far too powerful. It's also how millions are coping with this crisis | John Harris

As coronavirus forces communities online, support groups are realising Facebook's promise to truly connect us

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About 25 years ago, "face time" was a new phrase. In 1994 or thereabouts, news came that in cutting-edge workplaces of the US, the term denoted time actually spent in the company of other human beings - and was, by implication, a symbol of how that most basic aspect of human interaction was being lost. As they became immersed in email and the nascent worldwide web, it was rumoured that the most modern people were increasingly removed from even their friends and families - something crystallised in Douglas Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs, which moves from Microsoft's HQ near Seattle to Silicon Valley.

Midway through the book comes an angst-ridden email written by one of the key characters. "So many people no longer have lives that you raeally [sic] have to wonder if some new mode of existence is being created which is going to become so huge that it is no longer on the moral scale - simply the way people ARE," he says. "I only need 2 hours of people a day. I can get by on that amount. 2 hours of FaceTime."