TORONTO -- At 24, I’m the youngest member of the W5 team, and undeniably part of the "online generation."

I’m pretty active on social media -- I use Facebook to stay in touch with friends, I’m regularly checking my Twitter feed for breaking news, and I even have an Instagram account where you can find predictably boring shots of my food.

So when W5 decided to conduct an online survey to see how much personal information children and teenagers across Canada are sharing online, I was the one for the job.

I have to admit, I was surprised at what I saw.

Most of the social media profiles I found online were open and had location services turned on -- meaning anyone can access whatever they’ve posted and know exactly where they posted it from.

I randomly chose a middle school in Toronto and searched it as a hashtag on Instagram. Within seconds, photos of smiling 12- and 13-year-olds filled my screen. I clicked on one of the images -- a young girl with her arms around her boyfriend -- and pulled up her profile.

Right away, I was inside her world. I knew her name, her birthday, her phone number and where she lived. I easily learned who her closest friends were, who she was dating and how long they’d been together. I even knew when she was alone at work -- she’d posted a photo saying as much.

I came across the profile of a young boy in grade eight. In less than five minutes, I could tell you his full name, where and when he was born, his school, his friends, his favourite sports, the teams he plays on, his phone number, his dog’s name and the fact that his dad had died a year ago.

I was amazed at some of the things that were being shared online. One teenager posted her hospital bracelet; another posted his passport -- not the cover, but the inside page. I saw countless photos of class schedules and identification cards.

One kid proudly posted his school report card, it had a big red “honour student” stamp on it. But by posting that one picture, he was sharing more than just his good grades. The report card was full of private information including his full name, date of birth, home address and phone number, mother’s name, mother’s work and cell number, his classes and of course, the address of the school he attends every day.

Beyond the personal information, I was genuinely unprepared to see some of the intimate details that kids and teens were sharing online. They were openly discussing their love interests, sexual activity and intimate personal details.

Sure, this might just be typical teenage stuff. But it’s concerning when you stop to think that I -- a complete stranger -- was able to learn all this within minutes and without leaving my desk at work.

I also found that some teens seemed to be offering up personal information at the request of strangers. I spent some time on Ask.fm, a social media site where anyone -- “friends” or “anonymous” -- can ask a question and the user will answer.

I was taken aback at how many times I saw an “anonymous” poster ask a teen a personal question, and the teen would reply “who are you?” only to go on and answer the question.

One teenage girl was told by an anonymous poster “jeez – you’re beautiful. How old are u?”

“Thanks!” she replied, “14.”

The anonymous poster then asked her to take a “selfie by urself, pretty please?”

That was a narrative that kept coming up -- teens being asked to “post a selfie” or upload a shirtless photo, sometimes by friends, but more often by users who were completely anonymous.

It’s unsettling. Many teens had their Ask.fm pages linked to their Instagram profiles, which are linked to their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Between all these accounts, I’m not sure kids and teens realize just how much of themselves they are sharing with the online world, and what the repercussions of that could be.

I’m not naïve, I know it’s unrealistic to expect kids and teens to stop using social media. I likely wouldn’t give it up myself. But there are ways to use social media smartly and safely. Every social media app or website that I looked at has the option to make your profile private, or limit questions from anonymous users. You can control who follows you and sees your posts, and you can turn the location services on your phone off, keeping your location unknown.