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Answer from our panel of experts:

The notion that children know more than their parents can be a little misleading and often only serves to make parents feel inadequate and ill-prepared to help and support their children when they are online.

It is very true that many young people are technically able, they can race across the keyboard and generally work out how to do things more quickly than their parents, but knowledge is not the same as wisdom, and that’s where parents come in.

Young people can be resilient, but some do not deal with risk and don’t really think about consequences, they will do something and then think about the consequences later!

Parents are often better experts at protecting their children from all of the less pleasant things that can cause problems for us in the offline world: bullying, pornography, violence, racism all exist in the physical world.

The internet has not created any wholly new risks to children but it has enabled some old and familiar ones to present themselves in new forms.Ìý In a way, this should be of some comfort to parents and they should have some confidence in dealing with these issues.

The internet just changes things. Children are children, they are curious and will make mistakes and sometimes do things that they shouldn’t. A good analogy could be looking up rude words in the dictionary which many of us did when we were at school.

Children still do that now, but of course when they use the internet the content that they are faced with is far more extreme than the dull, uninteresting definition that we found in our traditional dictionary.

Again, dialogue is the most important thing and ensuring that children know that they have someone to turn to if things go wrong.

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.