Digital puberty: It might not be in the dictionary yet, but its effects are being discussed by teachers, social psychologists and cultural anthropologists plotting out the pitfalls, mapping the maneuvering, of this bold new world where teens grow up — and strive and stumble.

It's all being played out on a digital stage these days. It's this cyber-hangout — always on, ever-connected, texting and instant messaging, plugged into one social network or another — where teens and preteens now gossip and flirt. It's where they break up and make up. Post pictures of where they all hung out the night before.

When things get nasty — when insults are flung wall-to-wall (in Facebook lexicon that means just about anyone can read right along), when embarrassing photos get passed from cell phone to cell phone — the backlash is instant and vast and far beyond anyone's control.

Only, without the face-to-face encounter, a vital check for bad behavior is stripped from the equation. And that, say the experts, might be a crucial difference.

"These bullies don't see the face of the victim," says Kevin Honeycutt, a teacher who crisscrosses the country preaching the gospel of cyber-civility. "When you saw someone start to cry, you realized you crossed the line. Empathy would kick in — even if muted. Or at least one of your buddies would get it, tell you to stop."

Never in the history of social maneuvering have walls between public and private been so permeable. Nor, given the impulsiveness of teens and the exponential powers of cyberspace, have the risks of emotional and social fallout been so potentially damning.

Compounding it all, the kids are leading the way.

Two or three years ago, Internet safety meant slapping on filters to keep kids from prowling for porn, and to keep pedophiles from prowling for kids.

That hardly begins to fill in what experts now say is the critical void: Teens, for the most part, have been left to their own devices to navigate this new social milieu, to emerge intact from what Honeycutt refers to as "digital puberty."

In many ways, the cyber-hangout is a social landscape built for teens. Indeed, it's mostly unpatrolled by adults.

"It's the Wild West. They're making up the rules as they go," says the mother of a 14-year-old suspended from school last year after he started a Facebook group, "Ten Things I Hate About (one of his teachers)."

Digital natives — a phrase coined by Harvard University's John Palfrey — have forged, in many ways, their own civilization, with social codes, norms, mores and rules all their own.

The most reliable national statistics suggest about one in three teens, and one in six preteens, have been victims of so-called "cyberbullying." Another national survey shows, though, that only a third of those who've been cyber-bullied told their parents about it, and another third never told anyone.