ALARMED by the growing exposure of its youth to sex online, Singapore is waging a house-to-house battle to protect its kids after the Internet breached the walls shielding the city-state from smut.

Singapore had successfully constructed barriers against an invasion of sexually explicit material in traditional media such as print, cinema and television, but the Internet delivered X-rated content right into the home.

This poses a dilemma for Singapore, which is determined to make Internet access universal to stay ahead in an information-driven global economy. Everyone from pre-schoolers to retirees is encouraged to be Internet-savvy.

By the end of 2000, the number of Internet users had ballooned to 2.3 million. Three in five Singaporeans now have access to the Internet via homes, offices, schools, libraries, and other facilities, and 25 percent of these users are 16 years and below.

"With the growing number of children going online each year, we are understandably concerned about the impact of the Internet on future generations," said Minister of Information and the Arts Lee Yock Suan.

According to a survey by Netvalue, a global Internet measurement company, more than a third of active Internet users in Singapore access x-rated sites, and most of the visitors are teenagers and young adults.

Another survey of secondary school students, done by a local university, showed that one in two teenagers had stumbled upon sex material at least once while surfing. One in three had chanced upon hate content -- a sensitive issue in multi-racial Singapore.

Local websites are effectively barred from carrying sexual and politically inflammatory material, and Internet service providers offer special Family Access Networks (FAN) through which links to objectionable sites are automatically blocked using an online blacklist.

But the problem is that sex and hate sites are based overseas. New ones spring up, or old ones can change addresses, faster than the watchdogs can update the electronic blacklist.

The government, aware that heavy-handed censorship cannot work ultimately, has taken a "light touch" approach to the Internet by setting minimum standards and urging greater industry self-regulation.

The National Internet Advisory Committee (NIAC), which includes a cross-section of society, has called for self-regulation and pro-active measures to promote a safer Internet environment for kids.

"The NIAC feels that the social and moral concerns brought about by the pervasiveness of the Internet cannot be addressed by regulations alone, and that the industry and public, especially parents, can and should play a greater role in protecting the young from the negative aspects of the medium," it said.

An international conference on "safe surfing" ended here over the weekend after studying ways of battling the problem. It looked into international content rating standards, similar to movie ratings, and ways of promoting family-friendly material.

"Countries stand to gain from collectively addressing the complex issues that the Internet generates by leveraging on our common experiences," information minister Lee said in a keynote address to the meeting.

Apart from objectionable content, another area of concern is privacy.

"It was alarming to note that the children surveyed in the study thought it was all right to reveal personal information when offered a free gift," Lee said.

A Singapore organization, the Parents Advisory Group for the Internet, is promoting "online safety" in homes, schools, community centers and workplaces.

Its fighting force of "cybermumsndads" is plugging a list of "positive sites" and networking with similar groups abroad to promote a more wholesome environment on the Internet.

"Born in the Internet era, our children quickly achieve mastery of the medium. They need to be educated and inculcated with the right values to become mature and responsible users of the Internet, who are aware of the potential and pitalls of online content, contact and commerce," said the group's chairperson Carmee Lim.