Ryan Patrick Halligan was bullied for months online. Classmates sent the 13-year-old boy instant messages calling him gay. He was threatened, taunted and insulted incessantly by so-called cyberbullies. In 2003, Ryan killed himself.

States from Oregon to Rhode Island are considering crackdowns to curb or outlaw the behavior in which kids taunt or insult peers on social Web sites like MySpace or via instant messages. Still, there is some disagreement over how effective crackdowns will be and how to do it.