"That is an accurate description of the prank website I made when I was a sophomore," an irritated Mr Zuckerberg told members of the US Congress in 2018 when asked about his early entrepreneurship.

A billionaire bats away a question by hiding behind his youth and claiming the innocence and humour of the project.

It is doubtful that the women and girls, who did not consent to having their images shared, and were then rated, were amused by this harmless, naive little project.

That was the origins of social media.

This week, another programme about another woman in the public eye aired on television. It was the late Caroline Flack's turn for the revisionist treatment; a chance for us to see the error of our social media ways before it's too late — notwithstanding the fact that it is indeed far too late for Caroline.

Caroline Flack: Her Life And Death aired on Channel 4 on Wednesday night.

Caroline took her own life on February 15, 2020, while awaiting trial on an assault charge for an alleged attack on her boyfriend, Lewis Burton. She was 40 years old.

Social media's role, which is to say everyone with a smartphone and social media account's role, was well documented.

So too was her experience as a woman in the public eye.

The two collided to create the most lethal, and eventually fatal, of storms — that of a public woman's treatment on social media.

And the abuse didn't just start while she was awaiting trial.

Olly Murs, her X-Factor co-presenter, recalls in the documentary the abuse the pair got after an unsuccessful season of the talent show. Only she got it much, much worse than him.

"The abuse that she was getting, it was awful. It was awful," Olly says. "They hurt her every day, they did affect her."

For every person that has left a nasty comment, joined a pile-on no matter how right or wrong you felt, what we say online has consequences in real life.

Caroline's writer and actor friend Dawn O'Porter, who did not contribute to the documentary, responded to it on social media.

“You’ll see what unkind comments can do to someone. You’ll understand that how you perceive someone might not be the reality of who they are. And hopefully you’ll consider that if you’re even tempted to write something online," she said.

But we are all under the spell of the "disinhibition effect" when it comes to the online world.

It refers to how some people act out more intensely online than how they would in person. This loss of inhibition comes in six factors, such as a sort of dissociation caused by your anonymity and invisibility. The inhibitor is also caused by your minimising of your authority.

Remember how the billionaire framed his misogynistic objectifying site as a youthful "prank" — we minimise like that.

But there is only so much minimising we can do when people are at worst taking their own lives because of abuse and at best self-censoring and going offline.

In a huge survey of 14,071 teenage girls and young women across 22 countries, it was found that 12% changed the way they expressed themselves after receiving abuse online. 

But sure isn't that the goal of what we've been trying to do to women's voices for centuries? And what better way of silencing women than getting them to do it to themselves.

In that survey, the largest of its kind, which was published by Plan International last October, the worst finding was that 58% of people surveyed had been exposed to a spectrum of online violence.

And while people of all genders experience abuse online, in this case the abuse was very much to do with the fact they were girls or women.

About half of women polled who experienced abuse or harassment said that the abuse included sexist or misogynistic comments — 53% in the US and 47% in the UK.

Unlike in crimes of rape and sexual assault, where the perpetrators are more often than not known to the survivor, in the online world this statistic is flipped.

It's strangers who are the abusers online.

In the survey, 59% of women who experienced abuse or harassment said the perpetrators were complete strangers.

While we are not responsible for the creation of these social media beasts, we are the monsters that fuel and feed them.

This time it's not just the media, or the tabloids, or the British royal family, or Harvey Weinstein or Britney Spears' father — it's us.

Before the documentary about Caroline Flack aired, her mother Christine took aim at social media and, in particular, their owners.

"When I was young, if you were bullied at school, you could get away from it.

"You can’t get away from it now because it follows you home, it follows you on your phone," said Christine.

About social media companies specifically, she said: “It is not that there’s a lack of money. They don’t protect anyone.

“They are making so much money, it is not that there’s a lack of money or profits will suffer. Someone’s got to take responsibility somewhere for it," said Caroline's mother.

Whatever about us adults, who learned about living as a human in a world without smartphones, the internet or photo filters, what about children who are growing up thinking all of this is normal — who, because they know no different, assume this is the way humans interact with one another?

This has gotten away from us, this beast of social media, and we are either irresponsible bystanders at best and abusive perpetrators at worst.

Who is going to call time on the real-life consequences of our appalling behaviour online?

Anyone who wishes to seek support should freephone Samaritans on 116123, Pieta House on 1800 247247 or text HELP to 51444.