The kitchen is said to be the heart of the home – and these days it’s also the high-tech hub.

Changes in our furniture habits mean the kitchen table now doubles as a home office, as people choose to sit there with their laptops when the breakfast bowls and teacups have been cleared away.

Almost one in five homes have adopted it as a makeshift workplace, while the small office desk homeowners once squeezed into the corner of a room has fallen out of fashion.

You see a kitchen - for one in five homes its is also a workplace

The portable nature of computers – including tablets and mobile phones – means around one in seven of us also like to use a cushion on our lap as a temporary stand as we surf the internet or check emails.

Other modern innovations that are transforming our attitudes to furniture once taken for granted include e-readers, which have killed off bookshelves in 31 per cent of homes.

And flat-screen TVs that can be mounted on walls to free up floor space have led to 38 per cent of homeowners dumping TV cabinets.

The shifting attitudes were revealed by the biggest ever social media study of UK home life.

Even the young do their work in the kitchen

More than 16 million tweets over the past 12 months, combined with consumer polling, were used by Heart of House, the new homewares and furniture brand at Argos.

The hostess trolley is another staple that is no longer popular as busy households struggle to share mealtimes together.

Just 40 per cent own one now – and a third of people regularly eat their main meal in front of the television.

Almost a quarter said they don’t even eat sitting down, preferring to wolf down meals while standing.

Considering we spend a third of our lives in them, beds were the main topic of conversation about furniture in the tweets that were analysed.

They dominated 55 per cent of exchanges, followed by the dining table on 14 per cent and the shower on ten per cent. Armchairs and baths featured in nine per cent and seven per cent of tweets respectively.

The popularity of conversations about beds and bedtime meant it was even possible to chart the nation’s average bedtime – 10.33pm.

Nearly a third of dog owners were found to allow their pampered pets to sleep on the sofa, suggesting baskets are on the wane.

And the magazine or books that once resided in the toilet are slowly falling out of favour as one in 20 men admitted they prefer to post tweets there.

Jack Wallace, brand manager for Heart of House, said: ‘Thanks to the ever-growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, we felt that social media was a rich source to gain some real insights into typical family home life.