"Teenagers think it is challenging to make cyber friends, " but while they have some idea that a risk exists, they are not fully cognizant of what it entails and how to deal with it, said Vivian Huang, the head of the "Cyber Angel's Pick" association, which conducted the survey as part of its annual report on teenager Internet safety.

The survey, targeted at Taiwanese students attending grades 3-7, found that 26.7 percent of the respondents said making friends online was the main reason they surfed the Internet, while 25.1 percent said playing online games was the main attraction.

The findings were a reversal of the results found in a similar survey a year earlier, in which playing online games was cited more often than making friends as the main motivation by a 30.1 percent to 22 percent margin, Huang said.

Other troubling indicators were discovered by her Internet safety group.

When the children were asked in the 2009 survey whether or not they knew that Taiwan began to implement an Internet content rating system on Oct. 25, 2005, 69.7 percent of those surveyed said they did not know, she added.

Also disconcerting, Huang said, is that 28.5 percent of the children surveyed did not think their parents could show them how to use the Internet in a correct way.

Though more and more parents are using computers and other high-tech communication devices, they were found mostly unable to guide their children to surf on the Internet safely, she said.

At the same time, schools are also not providing sufficient training to enable students to protect themselves on the Internet, argued Huang, a professor in National Chengchi University's Department of Radio and Television and an expert on digital media.

The professor suggested that the government establish a cyber safety inspector system similar to that adopted by the Australian government, as part of efforts to secure Internet safety for Taiwan's youth.

Cyber Angel's Pick will also begin operating in late March a cyber safety hotline, which will answer people's questions about online security and risks.

Aside from focusing on safety issues, the survey also tried to get a broader picture of how Taiwanese youth in grade 3-7 use the Internet.

It found that the respondents spend an average of 3.04 hours surfing the Internet on weekend days or holidays, twice the time they spend online on school days, when they spend an average of 1.34 hours online.

Some 34.5 percent of the polled students surfed the Internet only on weekends and holidays, while 19.4 percent went online every day, and 15.3 percent used online services once or twice a week, the survey found.

The survey was based on 6,457 valid questionnaires received from students attending grades 3-7 in 109 elementary and junior high schools around the country.

(By Chen Li-ting and Elizabeth Hsu)