New data released on Tuesday suggests 70 per cent of parents worry their children won't know how to respond when they find themselves in dangerous situations online.

The poll of 1035 Australian parents commissioned by a security software company also suggests most parents worry their children will face abuse online.

"Just telling them to be safe online is not really showing them what they should be doing," Norton by Symantec spokesman Mark Gorrie told AAP.

"We'd encourage parents to spend time online with kids, it could be as simple as playing games together online.

"It just throws up opportunities to say 'Hey, see this ad injected into the game, you should be careful with these kinds of links''."

Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says the skills, values and behaviours that parents and teachers can pass on to children today aren't too different from what they themselves were taught growing up.

Respect and responsibility, the need to be resilient and learning how to identify whether something is deceptive are skills that help equally in the online sphere and the real world.

"Kids are very deft with technology but they don't have the judgement or reasoning to be able to withstand some of the issues they are likely to encounter," Ms Inman Grant told AAP.

The federal government-funded eSafety office, the only one of its type in the world, has signed up Australia Post, Woolworths and 500 other Australian organisations to help promote Safer Internet Day on Tuesday.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield says Australia is leading the world in online safety with the eSafety commissioner having the power to direct social media organisations to take down child cyber-bullying material.

"It's an area where we're always looking to see if we can do more," he said in Melbourne.

Australian Associated Press