Parents shouldn't stalk their children online, warns Danah Boyd, a leading US cyber safety expert visiting Australia to lecture on teens' online privacy.
Described by The New York Times last month as ''a rock star emissary from the online and offline world of teenagers'', the 34-year-old New York University professor and Harvard researcher advises governments, corporations and organisations worldwide on teen communication.
She's currently leading Microsoft's international investigation of child trafficking online, and Lady Gaga funds her bullying research.
But Dr Boyd warns that constant parental online surveillance not only abuses teens' privacy but obliges them to forge coded forms of communication online, using in-jokes, shared references and even song lyrics to evade parental scrutiny.
''The kind of public life we see online has never existed before,'' Dr Boyd told Fairfax.
When so many cyber studies warn parents of the dangers of the internet, Dr Boyd has become the voice in favour of letting children log on and learn for themselves.
''Children's ability to roam has been destroyed,'' she says. By demonising the internet, we shut down the only social space they have left. ''Being a successful adult in society requires social skills. And we desperately need to give youth space to learn them,'' she said.
As the Victorian Privacy Commissioner polls Victorian teens about ''sexting'' - the practice of sending revealing photos as texts - Dr Boyd supports calls for the laws classifying these photos as child pornography to be scrapped. She will be comparing US and Australian sexting laws in a joint study with Professor Kate Crawford, of the University of NSW.
''I have nothing against taking a legal stance against harassing and blackmail, but why prosecute the kids who are taking the pictures? Teens are sexualised beings and we have to accept that.''
Boys also send revealing pictures, Dr Boyd said, but ''girls' photos spread faster, as boys don't share photos of boys, but girls will share girls' photos.''
She has described the pressure on parents to supervise their children's internet habits as ''an arms race'' between surveillance technology - net nannies, parent-controlled passwords, keyboard tracking, GPS monitors - and privacy software to cloak activities.
''As kids work to be invisible to people who hold direct power over them (parents, teachers, etc), they happily expose themselves to audiences of peers,'' Dr Boyd writes on her blog.
Parents who want to help their children navigate an online social minefield need to educate and communicate, not berate, restrict or panic, Dr Boyd said.
''The way forward is to have open conversations, to really have a dialogue of trust ... if you engage in surveillance and break that trust, you'll teach them not to talk to you.''
In her work for the US states' attorneys-general internet safety technical taskforce in 2008, Dr Boyd found that the children most at risk of harm online - through cyber bullying or contact with predators - were the ones most at risk offline. Youth workers and educators should be trained to look for signs online that a teen is in trouble, Dr Boyd said, rather than assume that it is caused by the internet.
''Yes, we can find the most horrific things online. But most of the time [teenagers] are not looking for it and when they do look for it, we have to ask why?''
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