Cyber-bullying on the rise, researchers find

One unfortunate fact of life in the Internet age is this: Never has the "picking on" been so easy.

Paige Walters, a 14-year-old, was walloped a while back. The target: a picture of herself that she had posted on the social networking site MySpace.com.

The perpetrator was "a friend of a friend that I kind of know," she said. "He was, like, completely rude about the picture."

So rude, in fact, that Paige, from Blue Springs, Mo., took the picture off the site.

But it doesn't stop with rudeness. Homeschooled Sydney Steehn, 13, heard about a nasty Internet exchange that came home to roost last spring at Raytown South...