Hovering over your kids as they try to hide what’s on the computer monitor or cell phone is not annoying … or “butt out, Dad!” bad … it’s just good parenting in the Internet Age. I don’t care if it’s borderline smothering, you pay the freight into adulthood so you have a right to ask:

ME: “Who are you IM’ing?”

ME: “What site is that?”

ME: “What are you ordering online? Is the site locked?”

ME: “Who are you texting?”

CHILD: “Arrrrrrr, stop being sooooooo paranoid!!!”

I congratulate the father who had the courage (love) to grill his girl over text messages allegedly from accused ex-coach Danny Villa of Walpole, who faces statutory rape charges. You have to ask questions … lots and lots of them.

Villa, 44, who resigned last week as a teacher, athletic director and coach, pleaded not guilty to charges he raped and romanced a trusting 15-year-old student-athlete, texting her as many as 500 times in one month, police allege.

In our electronic society, parents need to keep an eye on the gadgets. Laptops, cell phones with Internet hook-ups, iPhones, iTouch … I know it’s tiring, but what’s the other option? Here are a few sobering bullet points to plug into your BlackBerry … along with every cell phone number your kid and all their friends use …

• Of substantiated reports of child abuse, 23 percent for teens ages 16 and older involved physical abuse and 17 percent involved sexual abuse.
• The sexual victimization of children is overwhelming in magnitude yet largely unrecognized and underreported. Research indicates that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood.
• One in four women reported childhood sexual abuse and in most cases perpetrated by males.
• In 2005, worldwide revenue from mobile phone pornography is expected to rise to $1 billion and could grow to three times that number or more within a few years.
• Currently, there are over 600,000 Registered Sex Offenders in the United States; an estimated 150,000 have been lost in the system.
• Teens are willing to meet with strangers: 16 percent of teens considered meeting someone they’ve only talked to online and 8 percent have actually met someone they only knew online.
• Four percent of all youth Internet users received aggressive sexual solicitations, which threatened to spill over into “real life”. These solicitors asked to meet the youth in person, called them on the telephone, or sent offline mail, money, or gifts.
• 48 percent of students K-1st grade level interact with people on Web sites, while 50 percent indicate that their parents watch them when they use a computer, leaving the other half of those youngsters more prone to being exposed to predation behaviors.
• 32 percent of teens clear the browser history to hide what they do online from their parents.

So, who wins the next battle over cell phone and computer use? Something to think about as your kids head down the rabbit hole and into the bowls of the Web.

(All factoids from “Enough is Enough: Making the Internet Safer for Children and Families.)

I chaperoned a pack of Cub Scouts at a Red Sox game a few years ago where I was compelled to attempt to demystify two Fenway bleacher-bum bad habits:

• “Why is everyone yelling `Yankees Suck’ when we’re playing the Angels?” one curious Scout asked, and;
• “Why does that man’s cigarette smell so bad?”

The “Yankees Suck” chant (hate has no schedule) was easy compared to the waves of pungent pot smoke wafting in our direction. Come on! Cub Scouts need all the brain cells they can muster. That’s why cities and towns must ban pot smoking in public places (most of you agree — 52% to 42% — in our online poll).

Anybody who went to high school (let alone college) can sniff out the odd aroma of burning weed. Do toddlers need to hone that ability next? With the economy as bad as it is, I say ask some of the Mass Pike state troopers to help write some of those $100 tickets for pot smokers now that Question 2 has sparked a new open-air annoyance. (Those troopers peel off more tickets than any force in the Bay State.)

Talk about wacky! Police should hire some of the underutilized flag men and let them take a cut of all the weed smokers they wack. Turn this into a revenue stream and lift the cloud of doubt from Question 2.

You want to know, “Is Detective Sgt. Robert Manning a good investigator?” (Ya, you Mr. Persistent poster one entry below. You asked, I’ll answer.)

Are you reading my mind? The year will soon be tossed in the memory basket after endless crazy days sweating to keep up with crime, the creeps and a few good guys.

Bob Manning (pictured) falls into the latter category.

He can’t grab the headlines. He has to work long days and longer nights until all the appeals are over and the case is closed before he can talk. But that ain’t gonna stop me.

Dump all the CSI dramas, Bob Manning lives in the real world where murders are not neat plots with titillating denouements. He deals with real loss. The type that keep you up nights wondering how could someone be so cruel? In the double-murder case against betraying Brit Neil Entwistle, for instance, a mother and child were executed by their loving man of the house who turned out to be a heartless narcissist. It was Manning who made sure he was put away …

• I wrote about it all in this blog entry this past June.

Read how a cop does his job … methodically … compassionately. You ask me what I think of Sgt. Manning? I think I showed him around at work and told everyone, “Here’s the man who broke open the Entwistle case!” I showed him the newsroom, the old printing press and the new Web deck where we push this paper out onto the `Net.

I showed him how I did my job, because he sure showed me — and 12 jurors — how he does his. That’s what I think of this guy. I’m glad he’s out there.

As we wrote: Meyer’s body was discovered in a swampy, woodsy area in Norfolk on Oct. 20, three days after she disappeared from a post-homecoming game drinking party at an abandoned airport. Investigators said she drowned.

She allegedly downed a bottle of Bacardi rum and wandered off and died. A 17-year-old with a glorious life in front of her stumbled away drunk, police say, and nobody noticed? No friend was watching out? Nobody put her in a car to dump her on her mom’s lawn?

We can debate the ills of teen drinking all day … what about teen loyalty? Why didn’t somebody pick this girl up and drag her to safety. Roll her on the lawn of the town church, police station, hospital, good guy next door … turn to somebody who would know what to do. It’s a waste.

A year should mean more than just the one in which you graduate from high school and life is a big sloppy party. I wonder if anybody agrees?

There’s lots more to write (good and bad) and I promise to get to it all in 2009. Thanks for asking  …

Just in from the Suffolk DA:

State Police homicide detectives assigned to the Suffolk DA’s office and MBTA Transit Police detectives are investigating the fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old Roxbury boy on the Route 28 bus at around 9:30 tonight.  The youth was rushed to Boston Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead of his injuries.  Family members have identified the victim but out of respect for their loss we will not release his name tonight. The incident remains under very active investigation by State Police and Transit Police detectives.  Anyone with information is urged to call Transit Police at 617-222-1212; callers may remain anonymous if they wish.

Here’s a brutal nib (news in brief) from 1994:

CHICOPEE — Police have charged a 25-year-old exotic dancer with murder in the killing of a Ludlow man in a Chicopee motel. Police said Pamela Osl of Springfield was arrested at the motel Thursday after initially telling police she was the victim’s daughter. Police said it appeared the man, Reginald Laraway, 65, may have been dead two days. Officials said Laraway had been beaten about the head and his throat slit. Osl, who had been a dancer at a Springfield club, was held without bail.

Pamela Osl will have her “initial” parole hearing in front of the state Parole  Board on Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. She’s now at least 40 years old, still plenty of time to live a life outside of prison. As for Reginald Laraway, he’s gone without a trace.

Caroline Kennedy is, you know, famous. Her dad, you know, was a great man. But, um, you know, does that make her U.S. Senate material?

By now you may know that Caroline Kennedy can’t stop uttering “You know” as a bridge between thoughts. Here’s a YouTube clip that counts them all with an annoying buzz.

It’s a common speech tic that can be overcome by simple Pavlovian conditioning. My wife would count the number of times I said “You know” on TV interviews. (The day she said I uttered 16 is when I started hearing the “You knows.”) Her point was who cares what you have to say if all anyone can remember is … YOU KNOW.I know!!!!

We’re all watching Caroline’s on-the-job-training. It’s painful. Isn’t eloquence part of the resume needed to land this gig? I say consider author William Kennedy. He’s from Albany and is a brilliant writer and speaker … ya know.

(Go first to William Kennedy’s book “Ironweed,” then see if you still think Caroline Kennedy is a better choice.)