In this presentation I seek to explore the negotiation of parental and adolescent identities vis a vis computer-mediated communication technologies. Drawing on extended, long-term interviews with families and on observations of family members as they interact among themselves and with the computer, the paper will focus on the sense of dependence as it is articulated in the families' discourse. Dependence--as both subordination and intimacy--is a defining (while constantly shifting) feature of the family; and childhood, by its very essence, is seen as a state of ultimate dependence. But what happens when children not only see what their parents see, as pointed out by Meyrowitz, but when they have more knowledge and proficiency, and greater space and access, than do their parents? The mobile telephone and the computer are both constructed in children's discourse as technologies of freedom, allowing them to get away from their real, unmediated environments. How do they construct the independence they gain? And how do they negotiate it with their parents? Employing methods of discourse analysis, it appears that a distinction needs to be drawn between computer mastery that is articulated in the conversation about learning, knowledge, apprenticeship, and ignorance ("I am the Internet expert"); and the discourse of consumption, which revolves around purchasing, payment, liberties and obligations ("the mobile allows me to?"). Outlining the contours of intellectual independence and ownership independence, the paper will thus attempt to interweave cultural assumptions about the nature of different communication technologies with theories about learning and knowledge and theories of family power, in order to develop a reflective account of the negotiation of identity vis a vis computer-mediated communication technologies.