This week a media firestorm broke out over a twitter page which may have been run by Long Island high school students. The page was of Nassau and Suffolk teenagers posting their drunken weekend escapades on the now suspended Twitter handle @LIPartyStories.
Pictures showed teenagers naked, vomiting, passed out on the ground and urinating anywhere where there is a place to sit. One picture showed an open toilet with a sink full of urine next to it while another was of two teenage boys standing on the roof of a house party naked. The most subdued picture of the lot showed three Babylon football players icing their feet.
Once the twitter page found mainstream attention it caught the eye of outraged parents and nonprofit organizations. A Port Washington parent questioned why they would post such revealing pictures.
“Kids do stupid things,” Peter Winick told CBS News. “We’ve probably all done stupid things, now you’ve got social media to be able to publish to the world how dumb you are forever.”
Marg Lee of the nonprofit group DEDICATEDD was one of those outraged by the account.
“These kids are literally taking their life in their hands. Clearly they don’t know that. Often times when a kid drinks too much his or her friends will leave them and the kid will die from alcohol poisoning,” Lee told CBS.
“Once it’s out in cyberspace there’s no taking it back,” Lee continued. "If an employer is going to be looking for someone to represent their company you’re not going to want somebody that’s been all over the web.”
When the story caught on the page became viral. At its height @LIPartyStories had more than 25,000 followers. The constant news coverage sky rocketed followers by more than 8,000 in a few short days. Right now it is unknown whether there was one administrator or several for it. So far all signs point to an anonymous high school student.
[Source: @LIPartyStories, CBS]