"In violence, we forget who we are," said American novelist Mary McCarthy.

If these words are true, we may be facing a generation of children who, despite the number of profile pages they may have on MySpace or Bebo, are increasingly missing a sense of identity.

"Violent Youth Crime up a Third," asserts a January headline in the online U.K. Telegraph. Beneath this header are statistics illustrating that between 2003 and 2006 the number of violent crimes committed by British youth has increased by 37 percent. While this figure may be difficult to believe, it does seem to be borne out by news reports. Here are a few stories dug up in a two-week period during the first month of 2008:

January 2, 2008: A father of two [52-year-old Ron Sharples] dies after being assaulted by a group of youths while out looking for the family dog.

January 3, 2008: Eric Mitchell, 43, suffers horrific injuries after being hit over the head with a paving slab by a gang of teens. He believes he was then beaten as he lay unconscious on the ground in Trowbridge, Cardiff.

January 16, 2008: A British court finds three teens guilty of murdering 47-year-old Garry Newlove. The father of three had stepped out of his home to speak to a group of teenagers who, he believed, had been vandalizing his wife’s car. The teens kicked him to death.

Unfortunately, the U.K. is not the only nation suffering an increase in youth violence, and perhaps surprisingly, teen males are not the only perpetrators. According to American FBI figures, in 1996 girls accounted for only 10 percent of all violent juvenile arrests. By 2002, however, 24 percent of juvenile arrests for aggravated assault were girls, as were 32 percent of other levels of assaults.

Does this mean the nature of girls is changing? Are females becoming as violent as boys? Lyn Mikel Brown, Meda Chesney-Lind and Nan Stein propose in the journal, Violence Against Women (Vol 13, No. 12; 2007) that "steep increases in girls' arrests are not the product of girls becoming more like boys. Instead, forms of girls' minor violence that were once ignored are now being criminalized."

While girls may not be completely abandoning their nature, whatever one might consider that to be, it's hard to believe that the increase in female juvenile arrests is entirely attributable to "minor violence" suddenly becoming criminalized.

When in the past would the following incidents have been considered "minor" violence?

February 4, 2008: At a bus station in Chelles, France about twenty 15- and 16-year-old girls meet for a rumble. They carry an assortment of weapons that include screwdrivers, bedboards, iron bars and steak knives. Warned by school staff, authorities intervene shortly after the first blows are delivered and arrest eight of the ringleaders. But fellow students say a rematch has already been planned.

The same day in Halifax, Nova Scotia, two teenage girls are sentenced for a crime they committed the previous summer. Apparently, using metal table legs as clubs, the girls had waylaid a 66-year-old woman as she walked through Halifax Common and beat her repeatedly, leaving her with a broken rib and severe bruising.

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