Two boys are fighting in a Calvert County middle school. A crowd of students laugh and jeer until a teacher arrives to break it up. Later discipline is meted out.

But the fight is not nearly over.

A video goes up on YouTube — 32 seconds of personal humiliation for the boy who is taking most of the punches. He has often been bullied in middle school, according to his family, and now is shown being hit in the head and side and placed in a headlock.

There is no apparent serious injury, and the clip is posted as “Weak People Fighting.”

It is uploaded onto Facebook, tweeted, shared and commented on.

“I showed my dad, he bust out laughin,” one girl writes on Facebook at 5:09 pm.

“I posted it on Twitter,” a boy posts to another Facebook page.

“I just watched it. Hahahahahaha,” another girl adds at 5:23 pm.

“I got it sent to me 5 times,” another student chimes in.

In an era of ubiquitous social networking, adolescent cruelties can be far more lasting.

The fight in the Calvert school stairwell endured for 16 days on YouTube. It was viewed at least 425 times. It was “liked” on Facebook. It was removed from YouTube as The Washington Post made inquiries late last week.

The episode Feb. 8 left 14-year-old Darin King feeling too taunted to continue at Windy Hill Middle School in Owings, his family said. For now, he is being home-schooled. “This took it to a whole new level,” Vicki King said. “This was for the world to see.”

The father of the other boy in the fight said the video embarrassed his son, too. “That’s not something he’s proud of,” said the father, who didn’t want his son identified. But the father pointed out that Darin threw the first punch — which the Kings do not dispute, saying Darin felt pressured and “set up” by classmates.

All of which underlines a central question of the digital age: How much can and should schools do when trouble on campus converges with social networking?

“Schools throughout the country are being overwhelmed with these issues,” said Nancy Willard, director of the nonprofit Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. She said school leaders need training in the dynamics of digital aggression. “Schools mistakenly think simply suspending students is going to solve the problem,” she said.

Calvert officials said they could not talk about the middle school case for privacy reasons, but they said such incidents are investigated and handled according to the student conduct code. Over the years, other school incidents also have been video-recorded by students, said Calvert schools spokeswoman Gail Bennett.

The King family argues that school leaders should be more involved.

Vicki King says she found out about the video nine days after the school knew it had been posted. Her eighth -grade son did not mention it, although he complained of headaches and resisted going to school every day, she said. “I was clueless,” she said.

At first only her son was suspended, for 2¹ / ₂ days, she said. He also was disciplined at home. After the video surfaced, two other students were disciplined in some form, she said she was told.