Teen Girl-on-Girl Fighting Goes Online
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Jim Liebelt Jim Liebelt's Blog
- Updated Feb 03, 2010
If you thought only men engage in fist fights, you'd be wrong.
CBS
News correspondent Whit Johnson reported there aren't any statistics
yet, but experts say there's a growing problem with teenage girls
letting disputes with one another turn violent.
Increasingly,
Johnson reported, girl fights are being recorded and posted on the
Internet, which can make the problem even worse.
A video
popped up on YouTube more than a week ago that showed two teenage girls
in a violent fist fight -- with two adults allegedly watching -- and
another minor videotaping the entire thing. The fight took place in
Baton Rouge, La.
Days later, in Lowell, Mass., local authorities discovered similar videos online.
Gerry
Leone, the district attorney of Middlesex, Mass., told CBS News, "We
found three different videos posted to YouTube, and it was
female-on-female violence, where young females were fighting in a very
violent way, and being exhorted to do so by friends who were both boys
and girls."
Leone says local educators report about 80 percent
of school fights are now girl against girl, a trend he says is fueled,
in part, by the Internet.
Leone said, "They see friends
getting a lot of attention from the posting of these violent attacks,
and being young and impressionable kids, they figure that's one way of
getting attention themselves."
A recent search for "girl fight" on YouTube turned up 267,000 videos.
Experts say the fights can also lead to cyberbullying, as tech-savvy teens look for more ways to torment one another.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/02/earlyshow/main6165570.shtml