By Carol Ladwig

Staff Reporter

There’s no changing your mind in cyberspace. Stefanie Thomas thinks anyone who posts online should keep that in mind.

In other words, once you post something on a social media site, it’s out there in the public eye for good. Or for bad.

“When you post a photo online, you’re giving up ownership of that photo,” Thomas told students at Mount Si High School last week as part of a PTSA-sponsored event. “You don’t know where that photo is being used, or in what context.”

Thomas, a victims’ advocate with the Seattle Police Department’s Internet Crimes group, spoke to students and adults throughout the day Monday, Nov. 8, about many of the big social media concerns related to juveniles, and received a very positive response from most who saw her.

“We feel that it was very successful,” said Mount Si Principal Randy Taylor, who scheduled Thomas’ presentation.

The school initiated the discussions after an upsetting incident last year with websites put up in memory of a Mount Si student who committed suicide, Taylor said.

“We felt that we needed to provide more training for our students, and our parents,” he said.

Thomas had given a similar presentation at a district middle school the previous year, and because of her background, Taylor wanted to bring her to the high school. She’s 25 years old, close to the students’ age, he noted, and she’s posed as a 14 year-old online to catch Internet predators. She’s as Web-literate as the students, and she uses technology to send the message, Taylor said.

Liz Piekarczyk, co-president of the Mount Si PTSA, thought students received the message better because it came from Thomas, who was more like a peer than a parent.

Her own children, Piekarczyk said are probably “less likely to believe me when I warn them about posting something, they’d think I overreact…” She feels that she lacks some credibility with her children, too, since her oldest daughter recently showed her how to change the privacy settings on her own FaceBook page.

Thomas covered cyber-bullying, FaceBook and sexting—sending sexually explicit or suggestive messages and photos online, with parents and students, but focused on different aspects of online safety for each group.

“With the kids, I think it’s about getting them to think ahead,” she said. “They can’t anticipate the future consequences of their actions, because the future seems so far away to them.”

The consequences range from emotional damage and lost reputations, all the way up to violent crimes and criminal charges.

“One in four kids are victimized online” Thomas said, and 30 percent of high school students have met in-person someone that they first met online. She shocked students and parents alike with the facts about sexting, that sending or possessing a photograph showing partial to full nudity of anyone under 18 years old is a felony, and those found guilty—even if the photograph is of themselves, their boyfriend or girlfriend—will have to register as sex offenders for the next 25 years.

To Piekarczyk, that’s overkill.

“Some of these kids who are sexting have absolutely no idea what they’re doing, and to have legal implications on top of the social implications… it’s like killing a fly with a hammer,” she said.

Piekarczyk says she’s always paid attention to what her children do online, with parental controls and periodic browser history checks, but she became concerned about the safety issue after the incident with the student’s memorial website.

“That was ‘trolling,'” she said, “and I had no idea that there are people out there who look for sites to post things just to be mean.”

She was happy to help facilitate the presentations when Principal Taylor approached the PTSA about it. Although she hasn’t seen evidence of a problem in this community with cyber-bullying and the like, she suspects it could become a problem now, or soon. It surprised her that many parents didn’t know their children were involved in such activity, she said, adding that the list of signs Thomas gave them, such as changes in relationships, or being upset after getting off the Internet, were invaluable.

By the end of Thomas’ presentations, everyone had learned something. In one exercise, Thomas reviewed a person’s FaceBook website for potential risks. Then she asked how many students had FaceBooks sites.

“Most of them raised their hands,” she said. Next, she asked if anyone was willing to have their website reviewed in front of the group, she said, and “Every single hand went down.” Afterward, she heard many students comment on needing to update their FaceBook pages.

Principal Taylor described another scene, in which Thomas asked how many students had FaceBook pages (95 percent) and smart phones (80 percent).

“The message was pretty clear, that these kids are connected,” he said. So, going forward, Taylor said the school wants to offer this same training to each incoming freshman class.

In addition to her first tip, Thomas thinks all social media users, especially children, should remember these things:

• Nothing you post is ever anonymous.

• If you don’t know a FaceBook friend in real life, you don’t know them.

• Always think about your reputation before you post something.

• And finally, “The Internet is a public space, so you better assume that the public is seeing it.”