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KIRKSVILLE, MO. -- Recently police arrested a Kirksville High School student in connection with a hate group directed at another student formed on the social networking Web site Facebook.

Jerod Reed, 17, is charged with harassment, a class a misdemeanor. He was arrested over the weekend and remains behind bars on a $1,500 cash only bond.

Until recently, this type of cyberbullying wasn't covered by the existing laws. But now, what kids may think of as gossiping with friends can have much more serious consequences.

“They've changed the laws now so that harassment encompasses telephone as well as any type of electronic device or electronic communication. And so if they threaten anybody, intimidate them or they cause any severe emotional distress or disturbance it's actually a class A misdemeanor,” said Sara Holzmeier, Kirksville R-3 School Resource Officer.

That includes communication in text messages, online postings and in emails.

Authorities tell KTVO electronic harassment cases can be difficult because they have to prove who was actually sitting behind the computer when the harassment occurred.

“In this circumstance it was fairly easy because individuals came out on the site and claimed responsibility for starting the site and then it was just talking to the individuals and asking 'did you start this and did you say this?’” Holzmeier said.

The Facebook group involved in the case has since been shut down, but not before many people joined and posted comments on the message board. We wondered how, in this case, officials decided that Reed was the one that should face criminal charges.

“We looked at a number of different factors--who started the site, the severity of the emotional distress it would have caused the individual that the hate group was started towards and the comments that each individual person made and how severely emotionally disturbed it would have caused the victim,” she said.

Holzmeier says it's important that people, especially kids and teens, using these social networking sites think before they type. She says once you put it out there in a text or on a Facebook or MySpace post it's there forever, and you can't take it back.