With the 2019-2020 school year in session, we wanted to provide a brief video for parents to share with their teens and tweens. It’s a story about a young woman named Megan who lost her scholarship due to sexting during her senior year. This scenario is actually a compilation of cases I have known over the last 10 years. Sadly, they continue to happen every year around the country. More often, it’s the girl that is punished through the courts, or in the case of Megan, through her loss of a scholarship. However, the top Division I colleges have also been known to rescind offers to male athletes for similar offenses.
Students must understand that friends will betray them – especially when a relationship has ended. However, they also must know that the cloud holds much of the media they have ever shared. Their words, photos, and videos can come back to haunt them, 10, 20, 30 or more years down the road. This will be the single most significant digital issues for this generation. There is an eternal record of what they do — and they don’t control who, when and where it will be seen.
