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...which I have not seen – he won’t let me be his “Facebook Friend”, says it is too embarrassing to have your Mum sharing everything. But I have heard from other parents whose children obviously have seen the pictures or have been told about them by their children. I gather in one of them he looks either totally drunk, or worse, and in another he is wearing very strange clothes, but not many of them! Should I ignore this or could they be doing him harm?

Several employment agencies have acknowledged they routinely trawl the internet, particularly social networking sites, looking for information about people whom they are considering offering a job to, or whom they might invite for an interview.�� Even higher education bodies have been known to do it.

When youngsters post stuff on their profiles they are not making an application for a job or University place. They are typically just larking about with mates. But, unfortunately, it can have disastrous consequences.

For these reasons if for no other, it is very important to impress upon your son the harm he might be doing to himself. All his mates get the jobs or College offers they wanted. He gets left behind because of a few stupid pictures.

It is also a good idea to explain the importance of making his profile “private” so it cannot be seen by anyone he isn’t friends with. But unfortunately, and this can be a hard lesson to teach and to learn, he should also know that even if he only allows friends to see his embarrassing pictures once, those images are on the net they can be copied and then posted elsewhere or misused. He may never know who did it but, again, the consequences can be serious.

Unless the images your son has posted are actually illegal or in some other way break Facebook’s terms and conditions there is nothing that you can do to get them removed. Facebook’s relationship is with your son, not you and they probably won’t even speak to you about it or reply to your emails. You need to sort this out within the family.

If you are a parent and are worried about your teen or child over-sharing online visit the Share Take Care: Ask an expert page to read the advice our panel of experts gave other parents.

Visit the Share Take Care website for more information on help and support for parents.