The Internet has its detractors, those who believe, among other things, that it has joined the ranks of other technologies that have lessened personal communication.

But Leebow isn't one of them, even though he converses via Instant Messaging with his daughter when they're in separate parts of the family home.

"I tell every parent to use Instant Messaging. They usually scratch their heads and say, 'Why? Isn't it a teen thing?' But the level of communication is so different, rather than face-to-face with teen or child. If you're online chatting, it's fun, it's goofy, it's weird, it's crazy. It's just a totally different way of communicating. It's kind of an informal communication.

"I encourage it. How often is a grandchild going to call a grandparent? Not that often. But if they're both online, they might start chatting and have some communication."

He notes that five years ago some experts thought letter-writing was dead. It's not, he insists, although acknowledging that e-mail is a different way to do it.

"How many e-mails are being sent every day? Billions and billions. We're really communicating a lot more now than in the past," he said.

Another concern of people with tech as their target is the amount of time youngsters spend parked at their keyboards. Leebow has seen reports showing that 17 hours a week online is the average for teenagers.

"The first item on my list is to do everything in moderation. If you apply that to the Internet or being online or being in front of a computer terminal as a teen or adult, it makes a lot of sense," he said.

Parents are the best filter and can even bond with children by what he calls shoulder-to-shoulder computing. The parents and children share an experience and parents get a better sense of their children's activities.

"You're not going to learn everything or know everything necessarily, just as they won't tell you the conversations they have in the cafeteria at school, but you start to learn," Leebow said.

As for the time spent, "you need to put in certain controls. If (your) kid is a soccer player, will you let them play it 15 hours a day? Probably not. They have to study. It's the same kind of thing related to, say, movies or what's on TV. Will you let them see and do all the things that are available? Probably not."

Likewise, he doesn't advocate banning Net use because, in today's heavily tech world, that would put a youngster "at a severe disadvantage" regarding homework, research, entertainment or communication.

Leebow has seen the Internet evolve but doesn't think that process has ended. To the contrary.