Our children are living double lives: one parents see, one they don’t see. This is the message of “Growing Up Online” a documentary lately aired on US public television.

Eager to have a private world separate from their parents, to get information on subjects they don’t want to talk about with adults, to connect with peers (sometimes much less abashedly than they would in person) and to simplify schoolwork (although not always legitimately), kids go online.

And because they do it behind locked door or in cafes or friends’ homes, parents are usually unaware of their children’s online lives. Moreover, the current adolescent generation tends to be more technologically savvy than their parents, making it easy for them to circumvent adults’ attempts to monitor their computer usage.

The results of this unprecedented state of affairs – what the documentary calls the greatest generation gap since the advent of rock and roll – is that problems become “amplified and accelerated", in the words of one father interviewed for the program.

His son, who was the victim of vicious cyber-bullying, found information online about suicide and successfully used it to kill himself. Another girl interviewed explained how her connection with other anorexics on the internet aggravated her eating disorder.

The documentary also describes perhaps more common activities in cyberspace: social networking through websites such as myspace and facebook where kids can create real or imagined identities. Also kids speak of sites like sparknotes that provide summaries of books relieving students from the burden of actually reading for English class. In response to such strategies, teachers can use another website, called turnitin to check for plagiarism.

Parents’ number-one concern seems to be internet predators – adults prowling cyberspace and trying to lure young people into dangerous situations. Adults interviewed for the documentary worried that teens feel more comfortable being public than they themselves ever did. “Discretion and privacy are things of the past,” lamented one.

However, the program refers to research on the topic, which paints a less worrying picture. A 2005 US Department of Justice national survey found that one in seven children had experienced unwanted sexual solicitation when they were online. But many fewer (one in 20) encountered aggressive soliciting that threatened to go offline, where somebody made an effort to contact them or meet them. And the data suggest that most kids are perceptive about the internet. Although they want their online lives private from their parents, they know not to give out phone numbers, addresses or other personal information.

The documentary concludes that living offline is not only difficult, but probably impossible. And that adults need to teach children how to handle themselves online – how, for example, to block bullies. They also note that the impact of the Internet is largely unknown.

“We found ourselves in the forefront of a new area of social research,” says one of the documentary makers on the show’s website. “We were acting like anthropologists doing field research. As we started meeting kids, we were struck by the fact that they alone were creating this new virtual society – outside the purview of parents and teachers.”

You can watch Growing Up Online – online.