Normally, I have no compunction about denying my children the pleasures of technology, but this school holiday it suited my purposes to allow them to keep company with the computer, the television and the Xbox.

Well, at least they were safe, I told myself as I carried on working. And quiet.

I wish I hadn’t seen that TV One news item last week about a couple of primary school children in Upper Hutt who’d started a petition to ban a particularly violent video game called Grand Theft Auto. The game is rated R18 but it appears that children considerably younger have been playing it.

I agreed completely with the Chief Censor, Bill Hastings, when he said that, apart from being liable for prosecution, parents who allowed their children to play the game needed a good talking-to.

But if I’d been in any danger of being complacent about my own vigilance on that count, my children’s reaction took care of that.

Oh yeah, they said when I told them about it, that’s a terrible game. Very disturbing. Senseless killing, car-jacking, that kind of thing.

How did they know? They’d played it at the house of friends of ours, whose children are a few years older. They’d heard about it at school. They’d seen a review of it in a news programme targeted at young viewers. It made it look kinda fun, said my youngest, adding that, to be fair, the reviewer did look at least 18.

My 11-year-old wanted to sign the petition. "The R18 rating should be enforced. In the real world you have choices but in this game you have to do criminal things. It encourages you to kill people because that’s how you win."

I was torn between feeling heartened that he’d worked this out for himself, and guilty for my lapse in parental supervision.

As if that weren’t disquieting enough, statistics released last week by the Australian Broadcasting Authority and Australia’s internet safety authority, NetAlert, indicated that nearly 20 per cent of children, some as young as 8, have been exposed to online pornography, most often through pop-up advertisements.

And about 40 per cent of them admitted finding websites they knew their parents would have forbidden them to see, and 3 per cent had communicated with strangers online.

According to the report, Australian kids are using the internet for longer, and from ever younger ages - prompting a warning that parents and teachers should keep updating their internet safety knowledge.

But this is not easy when the average kid is more internet and technology-savvy than the average grown-up.