You can find them just about everywhere – in your home, at schools and even at the local shopping mall. They’re always connected – communicating constantly in novel ways with powerful devices no bigger than the palm of your hand. They are your children, and high tech communication fills their world.

Children between the ages of 2 and 17 account for 20 percent of the online population, or 20 million users, according to a 2002 sampling by Nielsen//NetRatings, a group that tracks Internet use by consumers and businesses. Instant messaging – sending messages that appear immediately on other users’ screens – now eclipses e-mail as the most popular form of communicating online.

“Texting,” or text messaging, the cell phone’s equivalent to instant messaging, is also prevalent among kids. One in three children between the ages of 10 and 19 have a cell phone, according to the Yankee Group, a technology research company. The number of children using these high tech communication devices will likely rise as more and more children e-mail and instant message classmates for both academic and social reasons, and as parents provide cell phones to children for safety and convenience.

Yet, even as technology continues to evolve, some things haven’t changed. Within these new modes of communication, one schoolyard tradition is finding a new home: bullying. Bullies traditionally tease their peers in person, ridiculing them for perceived faults. However, the impersonal – and difficult to trace – nature of e-mail and cell phone messages make them an ideal tool for victimizing others.

Europe is a good place to draw lessons about such bullying. Text messaging has only recently become widely available on cell phones in America, but a text-messaging system called “Short Message Service” comes with all mobile phones in Europe. In England, 10-year-old Phoebe Pluckrose-Oliver got 20 phone calls and seven text messages a day from bullying schoolmates. “They started phoning me, saying that I was in the ‘cow club’ and that I should phone ‘the loserline’ and stuff,” she said in a BBC interview.

According to Childline, a British child-advocacy group, 15-year-old Gail Jones attempted suicide after receiving 20 abusive messages in 30 minutes in 2000. In fact, one in four British children have been bullied or threatened online, according to a recent survey by NCH, a leading British children’s charity. Of the 69 percent who did tell someone, 42 percent turned to a friend and only 32 percent to a parent. The gravity of the situation has prompted the British government to establish a set of guidelines to help schools and families deal with text bullying, while several schools in New Zealand decided to ban cell phones in 2001, after students sent threats and spread rumors via their phones.

America has already seen high tech bullying within its borders. In one case, a Florida teen allegedly sent an e-mail to a student at Columbine High School in Colorado – the setting of the horrific school shooting that gained global notoriety – stating “I need to finish what begun” [sic], just a few months after the incident in 1999. The teen’s lawyer said he was suffering from “Internet intoxication.”

Because of the near ubiquity of computers and cell phones, experts advise parents to monitor their children’s online activities. Some suggest controlling Internet use by forbidding instant messages, or “IMs,” during homework sessions and by keeping the family computer in a common room. As for text messaging, it is recommended that parents avoid giving cell phones to young children if possible or at least monitor its use closely. In the end, it’s crucial for parents to make sure children understand that online bullying is just as wrong as anything that can happen in a schoolyard and that it’s important to alert someone immediately if they are being victimized.