Young people are reluctant to share intimate details of their lives with strangers online and are going to greater lengths to protect their privacy than ever before, according to research conducted by the Market Research Society (MRS).

According to details of the report in The Sunday Times, they are increasingly barring snooping eyes from outside the boundaries of their personal circles by “untagging” pictures, deliberately issuing false information and even running parallel identities on social media.

The report states that: “There is a universally held view that teenagers simply don’t care enough about online privacy, and this… can have disastrous consequences.”

The report, written by Colin Strong of the MRS Delphi group, says: “The reality is that, far from being careless about their privacy, teenagers manage it carefully. They just aren’t so obvious about it.

4 tips to help keep your children safe online Show all 4 1 /4 4 tips to help keep your children safe online 4 tips to help keep your children safe online Talk with your children This is the most important tool in keep your children safe online. Parents might warn their children about speaking to strangers in real life, but neglect to do the same online. The UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency (CEOP) says that “for many of today’s young people there is no line between the online and offline worlds”. Speaking with children should include knowing what new sites and gadgets they use. 4 tips to help keep your children safe online Learn about social networks’ privacy settings For many young people social networks like Facebook will be their main way to share information online. Posted images or status updates that they thought were private might actually be searchable via Google thanks to default privacy settings. Click here to see our guide for making your Facebook profile secure – and find out if your children are using other online networks such as Instagram or Twitter. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith 4 tips to help keep your children safe online Know which devices have internet access Internet access is not limited to computers and laptops – devices including smartphones, tablets and game consoles are also able to access the web. Some may do so through your home Wi-Fi and will therefore be covered by your ISP’s filters, but others may use mobile 3G or 4G connections, with filters put in place by the mobile provider - check with your operator to see what filters they have in place. 4 tips to help keep your children safe online Consider setting up parental controls Each of the big four internet providers (BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media) offers free parental controls that can be activated over the internet, with video guides to all four found here. However, parents should remember that filters are never completely effective, and the software may also block sites offering advice about topics that children do not wish to talk to parents about. Be sure to know what you’re blocking. Click here to watch video guides showing you how to set up filters. Getty Images

Jane Frost, chief executive of the MRS, told The Sunday Times that young people were increasingly using services such as Snapchat and Guerilla Mail, which delete personal data in a short time.

She also estimates that two-thirds of twitter users have a private persona, which they share only with a private circle, alongside their public account. When gaming online, people tend to put out a false name entirely, she added.

The findings indicate that Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, may well be out of touch with the attitudes of young people.

He declared in 2010 that: “People have really gotten comfortable not sharing information of different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm has just evolved over time.”

According to the report, it is wrong to claim that when people put “inadvisable” material online it means that they no longer have personal boundaries.