When I saw an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph this morning inviting readers to make their announcements in the traditional way, I thought, “Who’d want to do that when you can do it free of charge via Facebook?”.

But then I remembered a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine telling me that he had asked his daughter not to announce her engagement on Facebook. How come? Because then her friends would know about it before her grandparents. Although I usually take the view that people should embrace modern methods of communication (I have no patience with people of my own age who say things like “Facebook?”: it’s the 21st century: get over it!), I can see that some battles will never be won, and are probably not even worth fighting. (Or do you think (as part of me does) that all these “oldies” should stop acting like old people and get signed up to Facebook, Twitter and start blogging?)

This seems like a good example of where using the modern approach would cause offence to some people because of the unintended consequence of appearing disrespectful. Even we digital evangelists have to exercise self-restraint sometimes.