[...] Last April in an omnibus review of studies addressing youth, privacy and reputation, a report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard noted that parents who checked their children’s online communications were seen as “controlling, invasive and ‘clueless.’ ” Young people, one study noted, had a notion of an online public viewership “that excludes the family.”

Conversely, studies show that more parents are heading in Christine’s direction. A recent study of teenagers and phones by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project said that parents regard their children’s phones as a “parenting tool.” About two-thirds said they checked the content of their children’s phones (whether teenagers pre-emptively delete texts is a different matter). Two-thirds of the parents said they took away phones as punishment. Almost half said they used phones to check on their child’s whereabouts.

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