Teens' fight video: Closer look

The cyberbullying case involving four Long Island, N.Y., teenage girls and – it is now being alleged – the victim's boyfriend has turned out to be a real puzzle for parents, police, and school officials to solve (see last week's issue ). We find in "A family stunned," a later, more in-depth report from Newsday , that the victim says she first met her attackers when they approached to attack. The attackers say they all knew each other and the victim and her boyfriend encouraged them to fight with the victim (the boyfriend allegedly videotaped the fight). The mother of the victim did say, as did the police, that the fight had "revolved around a boy." The mother also said that only after the video appeared online did her daughter tell her about the attack (bearing out research showing that only 11.3% of cyberbullying victims tell their parents – see below). The attackers' lawyer told Newsday the whole thing was staged for airing on MySpace, YouTube, and Photobucket, where the video appeared. Suffolk County Executive Steven Levy says parents need to be as concerned about cyberbullying as online sexual predation. I think he's right, not because sexual predation isn't a risk, but because research will probably soon show that a great many more children will be affected by cyberbullying than by predation. We have research now on half that equation: more than one-third of US kids have been cyberbullied, and that doesn't even include those who have caused or witnessed an incident. For more on what might be learned from this incident, please click to this week's issue of my newsletter.