The most emailed story on the New York Times website over the weekend involved a frightening example of how our digitized world can quickly turn a small mistake into a full-blown personal disaster.

The story involved an eighth-grade girl, Margarite, in the small town of Lacey, Washington, who snapped a cell-phone photo of herself standing nude in front of a full-length mirror.

Then she sent it to her new boyfriend, Isaiah, a practice loosely known as “sexting.”

Isaiah then forwarded the photo to another girl, who then forwarded the photo with the caption “Ho Alert!” to her long list of contacts, urging them to send it to all of their friends.

Within 24 hours, the girl’s naked photo was on thousands of cell phones in her school and community.

Her distressed mother later explained that Margarite had a desperate need to feel noticed and special, which probably describes nearly every child that age.

Ultimately, the parents in Lacey contacted other parents, who contacted school officials, who contacted police, who contacted prosecutors.

In the end, three teens were led away from their homes in handcuffs and facing felony charges of distributing child pornography, a secondary tragedy for those children and their families.

The charges were later bargained down to telephone harassment and the children sentenced to do community service projects involving privacy and bullying.

While the case is extreme, Margarite’s suffering has no doubt been shared by youngsters across the country.

Surveys show that as many as 25 percent of teenagers have sent revealing photos of themselves to others. There’s no solid information on how many of those teens later regretted doing so.

Students and parents need to realize that electronic media is forever. Really, forever.

It’s one thing to say or do something stupid in front of a couple of friends.

But once one person hits the “send” button, that nude photo or ill-considered remark can instantly take on a life of its own, circulating among hundreds or even thousands of people within hours.

And, once distributed, that image or comment is probably impossible to retrieve.

The photo of the innocent girl in Washington state could easily pop back up to haunt her a decade from now. She will always live with that fear.

It doesn’t help that we live in a world saturated with sexual imagery and inappropriate behavior.

For as long as there have been teenagers, they have made impulsive mistakes.

What has radically changed is the way electronic devices can greatly multiply the impact of those mistakes.

That’s a lesson more young people need to consider before hitting the “send” button.

rrhoades@sunjournal.com

The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.