It's an age-old problem that's taken on a new form in a new age. And it's posing a new challenge for educators.

Once limited to face-to-face encounters, bullying has moved to the Internet, where, some say, the insults have become more damaging because the perpetrators can hide behind screen names and online personalities created with the click of a mouse.

"You're not speaking to someone. There's not a face there," said Jeff Boston, principal of Augusta's Hodgkins Middle School. "I think people are more adventurous in how they're going to communicate" with the Internet. "I think it's more spiteful and hurtful."

The examples of online bullying vary.

In Chelsea, a 13-year-old girl claimed that bullying begun on school grounds moved online in March, when a classmate allegedly hijacked her profile page on MySpace.com to harass her. A Web page filled with demeaning statements, written as if the 13-year-old girl were describing herself, was posted until family members intervened with MySpace administrators, who removed it.

Beyond being hurtful, online harassment has proven fatal.

In a widely publicized 2006 case in Dardenne Prairie, Mo., 13-year-old Megan Meier killed herself after being insulted online by a schoolmate's mother pretending to be a 16-year-old boy. The woman created the bogus personality to learn what the girl thought of her own daughter.

Online bullying, or cyber-bullying, is "really just taking the typical bullying behavior in the real world into an online environment," said Vinitha Nair, co-founder of Zoey's Room, a Rockland-based online-education program for adolescent girls.

"At the root of it," she said, "there's still that same one-upmanship -- the alpha-female, alpha-male fever."

For the adolescent and teen-aged bullies, there often are fewer obvious consequences from cyber-bullying and that can help it thrive, Nair said.

When Internet users make disparaging comments about others in a public forum online -- in a chatroom, on a blog or on a MySpace profile page, for examples -- the comments are there for all who log on to see.

"It becomes a lot more damaging, a lot more serious a lot more quickly," Maranacook Middle School Principal Mary Callan said.

And bullies can more often get away with it online.

Social-networking sites like MySpace can't effectively verify users' identities, said Nancy Willard, the executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use in Eugene Ore., and author of the book "Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats."

MySpace and Facebook.com, another social-networking Web site, have no way to prevent profiles from being created in another's name with the intention of harassing. MySpace also has no way to keep children younger than 14 -- the minimum age for using the site -- from fabricating their ages to gain access.

Marie Searles, the 13-year-old Chelsea student, said she and a friend fabricated their ages to gain MySpace access. Marie says she and her friends now regret it, as their MySpace use exposed them to online bullying.

The fabrications go against the sites' rules for acceptable use, officials from MySpace and Facebook said. The sites encourage users and others to report offensive profiles, and site administrators generally disable the offenders' accounts.

Any system that a Web site uses to identify users "has so many aspects of false security to make it unreliable," Willard said.

Willard encourages parents, teachers, administrators and others to report offensive Web profiles to those who administer the sites.

"We need to know that we can take those down," she said. "But then we also need to address the consequences for the young people who engage in that activity."

School administrators and teachers say they're constrained in how they can address cyber-bullying between students. Because most school computers block access to social-networking sites, much of the bullying takes place outside of school.

"We're somewhat limited in dealing with bullying outside of the school place unless that bullying would have an effect on something in the school or the classroom," said Frank Boynton, superintendent of School Union 132, which serves Chelsea, Jefferson and Whitefield students.

If the bullying becomes a school issue, Boynton said, administrators use traditional disciplinary channels -- detentions, parent notification and, at times, police involvement -- to address it.

Willard encourages administrators to treat any kind of cyber-bullying as a school issue. Early intervention can prevent its escalation, she said.

"Schools need to recognize that off-campus cyber-bullying is affecting students at school. It's leading to school failure and school violence," she said. "It's a new challenge and they need to respond to this new challenge."

Callan, the Maranacook Middle School principal, said online disputes among students have escalated in recent years.

"We spend a fair amount of time with the fallout here at school," she said.

Maranacook disciplines the students involved if cyber-bullying spills into the classroom, Callan said. All students at the school discuss Internet safety with their advisee groups of 10 to 12 students who meet regularly with a staff member.

"We really push the education piece of it because we can't be there 24-7," she said.

Boston, the Hodgkins Middle School principal, calls cyber-bullying a "community issue, where everyone needs to be aware of what's going on."

Programs outside of school are beginning to address it, too.

Megan Williams, executive director of the Waterville-based Hardy Girls Healthy Women, said Internet-safety lessons have become part of the organization's Girls Coalition Groups girl-fighting prevention program.

Nair, of Zoey's Room, said her organization has also added Internet safety tips to its programming mix.

Callan said she encourages parents to keep tabs on their children's online activities, perhaps alerting them to harassment situations early on, before they escalate.

When cyber-bullying situations do escalate and legal intervention is needed, Maine's anti-harassment law does not specifically address cyber-bullying.

Rep. Lisa Miller, D-Somerville, said she is considering bringing it up in the Legislature next year. She said she is reviewing examples of anti-cyber-bullying initiatives from around the country.

"I'm going to digest all these and see if any of these look like a model one for us to deal with," Miller said.

While a law may have its benefits, Callan said, children need to learn about safe Internet use and understand the consequences of online bullying.

"The worst thing I think we can say is, 'Don't go to MySpace," Callan said. "The kids need education around it."

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, Ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com