What's your kid doing online?

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It was pretty ironic. Not one journalist at the press conference was a parent. Or even had a kid brother or sister. Ironic, because Norton's Online Family Report 2010, is all about how unsafe today's kids are, online.

Seven in ten kids between the age of six and seventeen have run into porn, violence, stalkers or viruses online. Often, their parents never know. Even when their kids are deeply upset, angry and scared.

92% of kids say they obey their parents' rules for the Web. But a huge 76% say those rules are obsolete - because their parents aren't net-savvy. And a quarter of all children believe their folks are completely disconnected from what they do online.

I meant to do a story for TV. But I figured it would be a plug for Norton. After all, just two hundred Indian kids were approached by the company. That's in no way representative of the roughly 50 million Indians who access the Net at least once a month.

But make no mistake - the problem exists. Vidya Reddy, Executive Director at Tulir, an NGO which works with sexually exploited children told me about this teen who dropped out of school, because she was addicted to porn. Another one talked to a twenty-seven-year-old guy on the webcam. Topless. A month later, they were meeting at the local coffee shop.

Scary stories. I know a few scarier ones. Adnan Patrawala, the teen found murdered in a Mumbai mall three years ago. His schoolmates created a fake profile on Orkut and pretended to be a sexy girl called Angel. After weeks of flirting, Angel asked Adnan out for a date. The boy was kidnapped, mugged and then snuffed out.

Then, kids from elite schools found dead in our metros. They'd been throttling each other or hanging themselves from the ceiling. Not to commit suicide. But for the sexual high the human brain triggers when it's starved of oxygen and then suddenly revived. They got the idea from YouTube, from videos their peers in the US posted.

Forgotten DPS Delhi's MMS case yet? The schoolgirl filmed in a compromising situation with her boyfriend who then casually sent the clip to all his mates in school? Other children have their Facebook and Orkut profiles hacked by jealous schoolmates - and filled with sexual innuendo and obscene graffiti.

Forget the exotic cases. Experts say a lot of the movies and music kids download from the Web, have spyware and viruses riding piggy-back on them. In tame cases, they'll simply make your PC crash. But if you're really unlucky, they'll steal your credit card details when you go booking tickets or shopping online.

Digital tools like NETNANNY, CYBERPATROL, and Norton's "Online Family" can block suspect websites and limit your kids' time online. Even your Windows Operating System has an inbuilt control system, that you can set to watch over your kids.

But if I were a kid, I'd hate you for spying on me. If I were a kid, I'd respect you more if you earned my trust. If you chilled out with me, surfed the Web and met my friends. I'd still go looking for naked women of course. But I think I'd try and switch off after a while - because I love you.