An article in The Washington Post discusses the current struggles of Allison Stokke with her unwanted internet popularity. The 18-year-old high school athlete has seen her pictures posted and re-posted, often accompanied with lewd commentary. Though nothing illegal has occurred (yet), her case still raises concerns about privacy. She’s apparently stalked online and off to some degree, and that amount of attention can’t be good for anyone … particularly not a young woman trying to focus on her academic and athletic success. The Post reports:

She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity … Teen Tests Internet’s Lewd Track Record - washingtonpost.com

The easy lesson here is a warning to students who voluntarily post images of themselves, many of them more revealing than any of Stokke (none of which she took or posted herself). The harder lesson is the new level of vigilance we must take in protecting our online reputation as diligently as our offline one. In both cases, the way we are perceived and “imaged” by others is often out of our control, which argues for careful attention to whatever aspects we can control.

From the other side of the lens, this also calls attention to the need for direct instruction on the ethics of information, as David Warlick and others have been discussing for a while now. It’s good to know that in the Stokke case the photographer of the original image demanded that one blog stop posting the image illegally, and that Facebook closed down a fake “Allison Stokke” account, but these efforts can’t fight the questionable behavior of a large portion of the internet world. (Though, to be fair, and as others have mentioned, granting a lengthy interview with the Post is probably not the best way to quell all the attention.)

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of parents to impart a strong ethical base, but more and more that job falls to the schools to institute and the courts to enforce. In the Stokke case, nothing illegal has occurred, and admiring a young woman for her beauty isn’t, prima facie, unethical. But when a young woman’s sense of privacy, security, and reputation is put at risk, there’s certainly a problem somewhere. How should we, as participants in the online world and as educators, respond?

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