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games and software was patently illegal and an infringement of copy- right laws, but the practice was at this time restricted to a very small number of users. It was regarded by manufacturers as an irritation, but not a terminal problem. The overwhelming majority of games were bought perfectly legally in stores or from sites like Amazon.

Matrix did not conceal his activity from his parents out of concern that he might be infringing intellectual property laws. No – the most wonderful thing about the Internet for teenagers, he realised, was that your parents would never (and in most cases can never) have the slightest notion of what you are doing. It was tough enough for parents to keep track of which DVDs were entering or leaving a house. But at least DVDs were physical objects that a mother or father could confis- cate, should they find their thirteen-year-old watching an X-rated movie (always at the risk, of course, of provoking a tedious temper tantrum).

The Internet was changing all that. Children were growing up in a cyber environment which to them was self-explanatory and normal, but which parents found increasingly mystifying and treacherous to navigate. Teenagers were perfectly aware that their parents were at cybersea in this same environment. This in turn started to reinforce a sense that the Web was an area of their young lives from which parents could legitimately be banned. How many mothers and fathers have walked into a room and observed their teens minimising their Internet browser as their cheeks flush briefly? And if parents so much as glance at a Facebook page, even when the kids are accessing it in a public room, the child is transformed into a human-rights activist, accusing the beleaguered carer of acting like a Gestapo officer.

What many children and teenagers were less aware of was how, while they were able to pull the wool over their parents' eyes, there were all sorts of people less easily fooled – and whose numbers were growing. These might include stalkers, advertisers, bullies, groomers, police, teachers and criminals. Only the most sophisticated users are able to cover up what they are actually doing on the Web.

In contrast to long-suffering parents, these other interested parties with a modicum of computer literacy were starting to track digital footprints that children and teenagers were beginning to leave over many years. Such records habitually included admissions of drug-taking and alcoholic binges, the insulting of teachers, the bullying of class- mates and, increasingly, the posting of pornographic self-portraits.

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