Now, however, the world has been transformed by the internet and telecommunications. Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have married the broadband revolution, and their union has enabled us to choose a virtually unlimited number of "friends". (Unfortunately the word has to be in inverted commas.) We can communicate our statements to an enormous audience whenever we wish and, more or less, regardless of the audience's distance from us. 

The advance of technology has thus led to an enormous increase in the output of "friendship". We are undoubtedly better-off because of that. Some people spend such a fantastically high proportion of their time on social media that they are virtual addicts. According to Wikipedia (quoting from the Nielsen consultancy), "Internet users continue to spend more time with social media sites than any other type of site." More precisely, "The total time spent on social media in the United States across PC and mobile devices increased by 37 per cent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 88 billion minutes in July 2011." 

So we have here a 37 per cent rise in one year in an activity that is plainly central to the lives of millions of people. Without question an annual increase of 37 per cent is a boom. But how is the 37 per cent jump in the output of "friendship" to be incorporated in GDP? This is Edmund Burke's objection to crude utilitarianism. We value chivalry, morality, beauty and friendship. In some sense we value them more than the concepts of "aggregate consumption" and "gross domestic fixed capital formation" that are part of GDP. But the national income accountants do not know how to adjust the GDP data for the explosion in social media that has occurred over the last 20 years. 

Plenty of information is available. The Office for National Statistics publishes much material on the consumer price index, with the latest monthly press release estimating that the price of "photographic, cinematographic and optical equipment" fell by 22.5 per cent in the year to February, with such equipment representing 0.3 per cent of consumer spending. That price fall meant that people were better off. On the other hand, the ONS believes that the price of telephone equipment rose by 2.9 per cent in the same period, despite the dramatic enhancements in capability of iPhones, iPads, Galaxies and so on.