Cowardice, cruelty in an online world

The study suggests that online social networks help kids learn to manage relationships, and create a safe space for the "geeks, freaks, musicians, artists, dorks . . . who generally exist at the margin of teen social worlds."

But the trial unfolding in U.S. District Court offers a chilling rebuke.

The backdrop is the story of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who hung herself in her bedroom closet in suburban St. Louis two years ago. Megan was distraught over online taunts from a boy she liked, and the fierce way friends turned against her in an insult-laced cyber-free-for-all.

She died without knowing that the boy wasn't real.

His profile and MySpace page had been concocted, prosecutors allege, by the mother of a neighborhood girl who wanted to find out if Megan was gossiping about her daughter.

That woman, Lori Drew, is on trial now, accused of providing false information to set up the MySpace account, and using it to "inflict emotional distress."

If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

But it's not just about Lori Drew's hard heart. The daily chats between Megan and "Josh" apparently became a source of amusement in the neighborhood, among girls Megan had grown up with.

The girls signed on and pretended to be Josh, wooing Megan -- an overweight, unhappy middle-schooler. Then "Josh" dumped her when she fell for him.

Those are "social skills" our kids can do without.

In legal terms, the trial is an interesting real-world clash between free speech and cyber safeguards. But I found it hard to watch Megan's grieving mother have to explain why she let her daughter have a MySpace page.

The study I get. It reflects parents' real-world angst over being locked out of an online world that has become a "primary institution of peer culture" for teenagers.

Their reliance on the Internet as social conduit has done more than turn "friending" into a verb and spawn a shorthand of abbreviated words.

Now, "romance" is available to kids not old enough to be out past dark. And once private courtships and feuds have morphed into public displays, drawing instant online commentary from an audience accustomed to the dazzle of music videos and the callousness of TV reality shows.