Rebecca Moore on a moral dilemma in a snap-happy world

Everywhere in public you look – no matter how beautiful the vista, how intimate the setting, how tranquil the surroundings – you will see someone holding up a camera to capture the precious moment.

You could be on a parking lot in Slough and someone would be filming the rain. The need to document our lives and ourselves has gone truly viral, taking over our cultural landscape like Japanese Knotweed.

It strikes me as daft to miss the actual, real-world moments in all their 360-degree, technicolour glory so that you can share a video that 0.1 per cent of your online friends will watch 1.0 seconds of.

However, recently, the desire to document each second of our very existence led me to a massive moral decision: I am very good friends with a couple who may or may not be about to separate.

I am ostensibly better friends with the guy but over the years have become close to the female partner too.

Recently, I found myself on a day trip with her, a day in which taking pictures on her iPhone was – apparently – imperative.

Her husband has been going out of his mind in recent weeks and months unable to understand why her affections have dwindled toward him and why she has seemed “closed”.

I have tried to calm his concerns. At first, I told him she was probably stressed at work, perhaps just a little low in her self-esteem... then as weeks have gone by my excuses for her have sounded increasingly hollow even to my usually optimistic ears.

Finally, his paranoia began to take hold of me so I pondered whether her affections had perhaps focused elsewhere.

Until there we were, his wife and I, sitting alone in a restaurant, her phone in my hand as she skipped off to the toilet leaving me to peruse our pictures from the day.

In the three minutes while she was in the ladies I could have easily flicked through her texts, her Whatsapp and her Facebook messenger. I could easily have discerned any overly flirtatious interactions.

I could have put her husband’s mind at rest. Or I could have broken up a marriage. Ultimately, and with a degree of childlike regret, I finished flicking through the pictures and, pausing briefly, finally locked her phone shut. Not knowing the code, my one opportunity to discover any deception passed in that instant.

I’ve been conflicted about this decision ever since.

Rather than deciding that I should have peeked or that I am morally superior for having not peeked I now just hate phones and cameras in general even more than I already did. Had I not been forced to pose for so many pictures, were we not to have such a culture of documenting every single second, I would never have been placed in such a situation.

I wouldn't mind if our pictures for the day were actually pleasant. But they’re about as appealing as those wet, parking lot shots in Slough.