Women would rather be on Facebook than on the toilet

A third of young women will check their Facebook account first thing in the morning, leaving having a pee and brushing their teeth till after they'd watered their Farmville crops.

The frightening statistic came in a survey by lady-oriented US network Oxygen.

The survey of 1600 18-35-year-old social media users - who have "Live out Loud lifestyles" - found more than half spent more time talking to people online than face to face.

Just over a third said the first thing they did in the morning was to check Facebook, leaving bathroom basics till some later unspecified time.

The figures showed some arguably contradictory notions, with two thirds of women surveyed using Facebook as a career networking tool, but 42 per cent being untroubled by pics of them bladdered appearing on the site, and a third thinking pics of them making obscene gestures weren't a problem.

They also seem unconcerned about flashing their location, with 56 per cent happy to tweet it out and 50 per cent flagging current thoughts to the world. Yet at the same time, just over half don't trust Facebook with their private info, while 89 per cent believe you shouldn't post anything you wouldn't want your parents to see.

So it's no surprise that 50 per cent of single women think the web is a perfect place to meet potential partners, with six per cent thinking it's a great way to hook up. Funnily enough, women are less likely than men to use Facebook to ditch their love interest.

If that all seems totally wrong-headed and self-contradictory, it's worth remembering that the survey only covers actual social networking users, rather than woman who have real world conversations or who restrict their hooking up to pubs, night classes, workplaces, petrol station forecourts or whatever.

Perhaps then it's no surprise that 37 per cent of the respondents have fallen asleep clutching nothing in their hands but a PDA. ®