"Think Before You Click," Reilly says of social media posts

​'Think before you click,' school official says of social media posts.  (Courtesy Staten Island Advance) 

Videos shared with SILive.com show a fight at a High School. One was posted to Facebook briefly, before going viral. It was then deleted since. The second video is a look at the fight taken from another camera, which shows the moments leading up to the altercation.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- "Think before you click."
That was one school official's message to students and parents navigating common high school issues in the social media age.

"Be careful of what you share because everything you do online leaves a footprint," said Mike Reilly, president of Community Education Council 31. "You have to think about how that act reflects your character and your parents."

Reilly has some advice about dealing with the consequences of living in a viral culture.

"The only advice is to have the conversation with kids at an early age," Reilly said. "Think before you react. Kids today have an impulse. These things happened when we were kids, but they didn't get taped. Times have changed. It's 24/7 now."

On Monday, a short clip shot by a student was posted to Facebook showing a male student in a black sweatshirt grab another student in a white T-shirt around the neck. He holds the student around the neck for a few seconds until the teen in the white T-shirt crumbles to the floor.

That 10-second video was deleted shortly after its posting, but the damage was done. The clip had instantly spread across social media sites.

"This incident is a perfect example," Reilly said. "I'm sure there's more to the story, but by sharing the video you now advocate the problem. The best way to stop bullying and cyber bullying is not to be an enabler by sharing."

The father of the student in the black sweatshirt provided the Advance with a second video clip of the fight, taken by another student at a different angle.

That clip -- which the father says adds more context to the incident beyond the snippet that went viral -- shows the moments leading up to the fight. It's a more fair portrayal of his son's role, he said.

The father told the Advance his son had been suspended pending a Department of Education hearing. The DOE was not able to confirm the status of either student involved in the incident.

"I wanted to set the record straight," he added. "This has been terrible. I've been stressed and not sleeping. There have been serious repercussions of this post."

His son, he says, has received several Instagram threats after the first video was posted.

The message of thinking before clicking applies to parents, too. A parent posted the initial video of the fight, the father claimed.

"I'm blunt," Reilly said. "Parents act like children, and share things we tell kids not to. It's troubling."