The survey also found parents had more faith in their children to act responsibly on the Internet than the children did themselves.

The study of Internet dangers, conducted by the Parents Advisory Group for the Internet (PAGi), highlighted concerns about pornography, sexual predators, misinformation, violent games and Internet addiction.

While children viewed the Internet as an entertaining cyber world, many parents felt they were out of their depth in making sense of the technology, PAGi said in a statement released with the survey.

"Even more parents are worried that their children might fall prey to paedophiles, access undesirable materials, pick up corrupting ideas, (and) get addicted to games while roaming the superhighways of cyberspace," it said.

But the survey found that while 81 percent of parents believed their children could behave responsibly when faced with cyberspace dangers, only 46 percent of children thought likewise.

Using a rating scale of one (the lowest) to four (the highest), the survey found that of Singapore's four language groups, among English-speaking parents a mean 2.39 were aware of the problem of pornography on the Internet, compared to 2.18 among Malay and Indian speakers and 1.94 for Chinese.

Education was also a factor in determining awareness of pornography, ranging from a mean 2.33 of post-graduates down to 1.56 for parents with no tertiary education.

On action that could be taken, mothers with only sons were more in favour of moving the computer to the living room than mothers with only daughters.

Mothers with only sons and fathers with only daughters preferred talking to the school about education on pornography than any other parental child grouping.

Among other findings of the survey, the highest awareness of pornography on the Internet among girls was in the 13-15 age group, while for boys it was aged 16 and over.

In the younger age brackets, girls were more concerned than boys about sexual predators and paedophiles, but aged 16 and above the boys showed most concern.

On measures and safeguard strategies, both parents and children favoured education rather than control, but only 36 percent of parents were aware of network access services which act as a filter for Internet sites.