By Theresa Tan & Alessa Pang

IF TEENAGE girls are online, chances are they are chatting with someone.

Having virtual conversations is, after all, the No. 1 online activity among them, a survey of more than 1,900 students revealed yesterday.

Visiting social networking sites such as Facebook and Friendster rank closely behind for them.

Teenage boys, on the other hand, are mostly into online gaming.

The survey on 13- to 18-year-olds' online activities was conducted by the Marine Parade Family Service Centre (FSC), which runs a cyber-counselling service for students.

Online chats may seem innocuous, but counsellors worry that unsuspecting teens may fall victim to those who prowl the virtual world for sex.

Mr Poh Yeang Cherng, who manages a cyber-wellness centre run by Touch Community Services, said he has met youth whose online 'pals' propositioned them or handed them pornography.

He said: 'The aim of passing porn to youth is to desensitise them so they don't see sex as something they need to be careful about.'

Counsellors are not surprised that teens spend so much time online; it bothers them more that many go online in the afternoons, when their parents are probably not around, rather than at night.

Ms Ruth Tan, a social worker at the Marine Parade FSC, told The Straits Times that the very absence of adults may be why more students go online in the day.

Most students interviewed by The Straits Times, like Samantha Pang, 15, say they usually talk to people they know.

She said she is wary of strangers who try to chat her up via instant messaging, and would ask them questions to check whether they are who they say they are. 'If I don't know them, I block or delete them from my contact list,' she said.

But some of her peers are more cavalier. Chew Pei Shwen, also 15, for example, has the idea that these strangers are younger than she is.

She added: 'It doesn't matter that much to me since I wouldn't meet them anyway, so it is no big deal.'

But meetings do happen after online chats. The courts have lately dealt with a spate of underage sex cases which began as online encounters.

This month, for example, a 19-year-old pleaded guilty to having had sex with a girl he met on a multi-player gaming website. She was just 10 when they started being intimate.

The FSC's survey found that 4 per cent of the students polled were now dating someone they met online.

Having romance blossom online is one thing, but Ms Tan is worried that teenagers cannot tell a real-life romance from a virtual one.

For example, she has counselled a few girls who are 'overly emotionally and psychologically attached' to their MapleStory 'husbands' at the expense of their studies.

Players in this online role-playing game manipulate digital images or avatars representing themselves while engaging in relationships or activities, or fighting monsters and other obstacles.

The FSC has provided cyber-counselling to students from the schools it is working with since 2000 as a way of meeting young people on their turf.

Each is given a password to access the FSC's chatroom, where they talk to counsellors anonymously. They are generally more open online than face to face, said Ms Tan. Many are losing sleep mainly over relationships and school-related stress, she noted.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.