The video, or picture you post today will haunt you tomorrow - that is generally a true statement, even if you are reading "on the internet." So much is the case that Google chief Eric Schmidt warned of it at the Hay Festival 2013.

While speaking at the Telegraph Hay Festival, he said young people now had to live with the consequences of having a complete record of all their youthful indiscretions online.

He also suggested that some people’s sharing of personal information online had gone too far, saying parents to be who post ultrasounds of their babies online before even naming them took things to “overwhelmingly excessive levels”.

Schmidt went on to pledge that it was Google’s policy to erase information about what individuals’ had searched for after one year.

“We have never had a generation with a full photographic, digital record of what they did,” he said.

There are situations in life that it’s better that they don’t exist. He added that “society has always had ways of dealing with errant teenagers” by a process of punishment and them allowing to grow up away from their mistakes.

“They grow up out of it and become fine, upstanding leaders,” he said, but added that the current generation of teenagers could now be haunted by their youthful mistakes.