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Five teenage pupils at a Thornhill public school have become the latest Toronto-area members to run afoul of school authorities on Facebook.com. And with the city currently holding the title as the most populous place in the social networking website's world, they aren't likely to be the last.

The pupils from Willowbrook Public School were barred last week from a year-end trip to Montreal for Grade 8 graduates after derogatory comments about teachers were spotted on a Facebook group.

It is the third time in as many months that Toronto-area pupils have been disciplined over comments on the popular social networking destination.

Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne told reporters yesterday that she plans to call a meeting of educators and teens to discuss the issue. In the meantime, with Toronto established as the biggest geographical entity in the Facebook universe, such incidents seem likely to multiply.

Driving it all is the extraordinarily rapid growth of a website that started in 2004 as a personal project by a pair of Harvard University students who wanted to help faculty and students get to know each other.

The social networking website now boasts more than 20 million users, who spend hours posting pictures, stalking exes and learning the intricate details of their friends' religious views and relationship dramas. That rapidly expanding crush of loyal netizens has made Facebook not just a lucrative business, but a wildly successful social experiment.

And as it turns out, Torontonians are that experiment's most ubiquitous guinea pigs.

According to Facebook statistics, Toronto is the single largest geographic network on the website (Facebook allows users to join one or more networks based on geographic or personal affiliations, so Queen's University students, for example, can join the Queen's University network, while citizens of Aruba can join that country's network). With more than 500,000 members, the Toronto network easily beats New York's 200,000 and London's 360,000.

In terms of Facebook users, "Canada is the fastest growing country in the world right now, along with the U.K.," said Mike Murphy, vice-president of media sales at Facebook Inc.

A year ago, Canada represented about 5 per cent of Facebook users. Today, that number is closer to 11 per cent, at a time when the site is adding about a million new users a week.

"If you look at the most recent numbers, it's absolutely hockey stick in terms of where we're growing and how we're growing," Mr. Murphy said.

The reason Toronto sits atop the Facebook geographic heap has a lot to do with where Facebook draws the city's online borders, creating a sort of greater Greater Toronto Area.

The Toronto network essentially takes in an area up to Barrie to the north, Hamilton to the west and Kingston to the east. While members from places such as Mississauga have been lobbying for their own networks on Facebook, none currently exist.

That discrepancy has led to a fierce debate among Toronto Facebookers about just what it means to be "from" the city.

". . . Most people who say they're from Toronto are bald-faced liars who actually come from inferior suburbs," chimed in one member.

When new users join Facebook, they start with a location, but can begin immediately signing onto groups that are defined by interests.

The Toronto network's portion of Facebook provides a glimpse of the various uses the teeming masses of new Canadian members are making of the site. Numerous groups and discussion threads are dedicated to the Toronto Raptors' playoff chances. Many members use the site to look for rooms to rent in the city, while others recommend consumer goods ranging from sushi restaurants to hairdressers. Inexplicably, a large number of Toronto network members have joined a group dedicated to tight workout pants.