There may be several more pressing matters to consider at the moment – such as Obama's $1 trillion toxic asset plan to resurrect the US economy – but you can learn just as much about our times from the news that Jennifer Aniston has just split up (again) with her musician boyfriend, John Mayer, because of his Twitter habit.

Twitter is a "social messaging utility" that allows you update people on what you're doing at that very moment. Thus, a Twitter update could read "I am tidying my sock drawer" or "I am eating a slice of toast".

OK, perhaps I am slightly cynical about the whole thing – probably as a defence mechanism to stop me trying it and getting addicted. However, the Twitter website's claim that "Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload" is so astonishingly ludicrous that I have a sneaking admiration for the sheer cheek of it.

To return to the important matter of Jennifer and John, a source close to Jennifer said "John suddenly stopped calling her or returning her emails and when she would finally catch up with him, he'd say: 'I've been so busy with work. I'm sorry I haven't had time to call you back.'

"Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn't have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates...Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he'd update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like 'He has time for all this Twittering, but he can't send me a text, an email, make a call?'."

This is a classic example of how utterly clogged modern life is with pointless and banal information – yes, "information overload" – and severely lacking in anything of substance. If we're to believe these extremely serious reports from the source, John Mayor was a little too busy with the pointless details to remember he was in a relationship with a real person.

And the problem is, everyone's at it these days – even Barack Obama. And if John Mayor can't keep a relationship going because of his Twitter habit, what hope is there for the US economy?