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The annual Mobile Life report, commissioned by the Carphone Warehouse and the London School of Economics, says that 11 per cent of children aged 11 to 18 have had sexually explicit conversations online, with 28 per cent admitting they have accessed adult websites.

Many often pretend to be doing homework when in fact they surfing the internet, with 49 per cent saying that they lie to their parents about what they are doing online.

The reports, compiled from a survey of 6,000 people, also analysed the difference between American and British teenagers, with children in the UK emerging as much more sophisticated. For instance, 53 per cent of British youngsters have communicated by webcam, something that just 18 per cent of their American cousins have done.

63 per cent of those who had suffered cyberbullying personally said they had received unwelcome emails. Over a quarter had had offensive messages posted about them on social networking sites such as Facebook and 28 per cent described being sent unwelcome text messages.

Although a significant proportion – 44 per cent – had been bullied by pupils, a startling 28 per cent said that a manager or colleague was behind the abuse.

As a group, libraries have embraced the digital age," said Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which has surveyed public attitudes toward libraries. "They've added collections, added software and hardware, upgraded the skills of their staff. A lot of institutions have had to change in the Internet age, but libraries still have a very robust and large constituency." A December 2007 Pew survey found that more than half of Americans — 53% — visited a library in the past year. That's expected to grow as more people look for free resources and entertainment in a slowing economy.

At the one-room Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Interim Library in the District of Columbia, books still line the shelves. But on one recent day, almost every adult at the library sat in front of a computer, surfing the Web, checking e-mail or visiting a social networking site.

The analysis found that libraries are thriving in the Internet age: •Attendance increased roughly 10% between 2002 and 2006 to about 1.3 billion. Regionally, Southern states lag the rest of the country in visits per capita. •Circulation, which measures how often library visitors check out print or electronic materials, increased about 9%, from 1.66 billion to 1.81 billion during the five-year period.

What You Can Do If you are concerned about your children accessing adult material from their wireless phones/devices, consider the following: Monitor how your children are using their wireless phones or other wireless devices. For example, are they using them mainly for talking, or are they using them for messaging, taking photos and downloading applications? Check with your carrier to see what types of material it offers and what types can be accessed from your children’s handsets. Check with your carrier to see if there are ways to prevent access to and downloading of content that may contain inappropriate material and that is available on a per-use or per-application basis (e.g., games, wall paper images, songs). Monitor your bill. Any content purchases made from a wireless phone should appear on your monthly bill, so check your bill to see if any purchases have been made from your children’s phones/devices. The FCC requires that the descriptions of charges on wireless carrier bills be full, clear, non-deceptive, and in plain language. Check with your carrier to see what handsets are available for your children that are not capable of accessing advanced applications that may contain adult material. Check with your carrier to see whether subscriptions to wireless data or wireless Internet packages also offer access to adult material on your children’s phone.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, Professor Turkle went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”