The full realisation that we have lost this capacity to supervise interaction between our youngest child and the world has come about fairly recently. Sure, over the years we've sought, not always successfully and perhaps not often successfully, to manage and restrict our children's use of the internet, and we've fought the good but losing fight against mobile phones in the adolescent world. The path is littered with small events, perhaps the confiscation of a phone, even the permanent confiscation of a phone, internet access rules, careful computer positioning, unannounced monitoring of computers, and banning of social-network sites.

But we've lost, I fear, and we've lost the war, not a battle. In our house we have wireless internet, probably later than most other homes, and our children have access to a number of computers. Our youngest has his own netbook, given as a gift by a family friend. When we realised the wireless capabilities of the netbook it became available by arrangement only, but, still, monitoring internet use is not feasible.

Our youngest has his own mobile phone, a whiz-banger, and he was, he assures us, the very last boy in his year to get his own phone. Even the move from fixed phones to cordless phones in the home dilutes parental control of the exchange between a child and the world.

Now, our children have survived and flourished, and their mother and I have not surrendered altogether, but our capacity to monitor our young child's life does seem to have taken a big technological hit.

Are we anxiety-ridden fuddy-duddies? Is there a solution? Is there no need for a solution?