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When you were a kid or a teenager did you ever do anything that was just a little bit wild or irresponsible? Maybe at a party after a few drinks or as a result of student over-exuberance? We can all probably look back into our past, hold our head in our hands and groan at our own stupidity.

But, what if you had had something serious happen to you that you personally don’t wish to remember and, more importantly, you definitely don’t want other people to remember or be reminded of, as it could be having ramifications on your present life?

This is essentially the reason why a Spanish man took Google to court back in May this year. Mario Gonzales’ complaint was that a search of his name within the Google search engine produced hits of newspaper articles, from 16 years ago, regarding the sale of a property that had occurred in order to recover money that he owed. Mr Gonzales took his fight to the European Union Court of Justice arguing that the matter had been resolved and should no longer be linked to him.

The EU court agreed with him.

The EU Justice Commissioner declared that the judgement was a “clear victory for the protection of personal data of Europeans” and “The ruling confirms the need to bring today’s data protection rules from the ‘digital stone age’ into today’s modern computing world.”

What the Commissioner, Viviane Reding, was referring to was the European Commission 2012 proposal of a law giving internet users the “right to be forgotten” and that people had the right to request information to be removed from search engines, if it appeared “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”.

However, this ruling could have huge consequences.

Should anyone who does not like a particular article or story about them have the right to simply wipe it out of existence? What about people who stand for public office? At the moment they can be researched to find if their digital footprint reveals any ‘nasties’ from their past and, although at present there is a clause within the ruling relating to data that is of ‘public interest’, the 2012 EU proposal that this decision supports, is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission’s 1995 Data Protection Directive.

What about people who committed crimes in their younger days?

From a wider perspective, this issue highlights why we should be constantly aware of, and monitor our own ‘digital footprint’ - to see what hits appear when we ‘Google’ our own name. We should be ensuring that there is no content that, not only is potentially embarrassing or damaging to our character now, but to think what it could say about us in 20, 30 or 40 years time if, for instance, an employer came across it.

It is worth remembering that during the earlier stages of this legal battle between the Google and the EU Commission, Google won at every stage.

This why it is also crucially important that we teach our young people not to be so care-free about their ‘digital footprint’ (and indeed, their offline activities too) and before they hit the ‘share’ button to publish that embarrassing ‘selfie’ doing something they shouldn’t be doing or the ill-considered rant about a particular contentious issue, how will that look to others 15 years on when they are a professional, a doctor or a teacher?

“If you don’t go to bed, the bogeyman will come and get you!”

“The bogeyman will come after you, if you keep sucking your thumb!”

Did you hear these phrases when you were a child? Maybe they were said to you or your brothers or sisters. They were common traditional phrases used by parents to frighten young children into behaving appropriately or to cajole them into doing what their parents asked them to do. Not exactly politically correct and, in these modern times of high definition, realistically scary characters or monsters in films or games, very unlikely to work.

A few years back, however, a phenomenon appeared on the web that could be considered the modern day ‘bogeyman’, the only difference being that it wasn't parents that invented it, it has appeared as a consequence of youth culture’s fascination with all things horror and ghoulish.

In the summer of 2009, a poster by the user name of “Victor Surge’ contributed two black and white images to the ‘Something Awful’ internet forum. The images depicted groups of children being watched from the shadows by a very tall, thin figure. Surge also added text, purporting to be from eye-witnesses, describing abductions of children. Surge gave the character the name “The Slender Man”

As well as being very tall and thin, the Slender Man had unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms and was usually dressed in a dark suit and tie. It was regarded as male and possessed a white, featureless face, which only added to the creepiness of the character.

The Slender Man captured the web’s collective imagination and, as these things so often do, it soon when viral, spawning online fiction called “Creepypasta”, fan art and cosplay. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before fan-made videos started to appear on the ‘Something Awful’ forums and this only help to feed the rapidly growing ‘mythology’ that was building around the whole phenomenon.

As the web community’s interest in Slenderman grew, the boundaries between fiction and reality blurred, as a consequence of the variety of conflicting online perspectives. This had the effect of obscuring the origins of the character and offered the whole saga an air of authenticity.

In May this year, however, tragically the whole urban legend became something entirely different when two 11 year old Wisconsin girls allegedly lured their friend to woods near their home and repeatedly stabbed her in an act that was apparently carried out “…to impress Slenderman” who, they insisted to investigators, was real.

Shortly after this incident, another took place in Ohio, when a mother came home from work and was attacked by her 13 year old daughter with a kitchen knife, wearing a white mask. During the attack the mother said of her daughter “…it was as if she playing a role, it didn’t feel like her” and afterwards she found some very “dark” writings and drawings created by her daughter referencing Slenderman - she had even created a whole world within the online game ‘Minecraft’, for the character to live in.

This incredible story demonstrates tragically how powerful the influence of the internet can be and how a viral phenomenon can so easily manifest into something that, to vulnerable young minds, can gain authenticity and appear real. It is why it is so important that parents and teachers need to be vigilant and monitor what young people are watching, reading and browsing. It is why films and video games have age-ratings - they are not there as something to snigger at and dismiss, they are there for very good reasons and should be treated seriously.

"There is a point to be made that e-safety education also needs to incorporate digital literacy, with a emphasis on understanding the context and veracity of information on the Internet. That children need to be trained to critically appraise the information they are reading in the same way we would hope to train them to be media aware enough to understand the political bias in a newspaper or the reliability of 'facts'" - E-safety Support

8/9/14 - There is an online game which can be downloaded associated with this urban legend which can be found at www.slendergame.com

Since the inclusion of e-safety in the section 5 inspection briefing, schools now risk missing Ofsted outstanding ratings due to poor e-safety strategy.

With indicators of inadequate e-safety provision including a lack of staff training, stating that “staff training is consistently the weakest area of a schools online safety provision”, along with no planned curriculum content amongst others, it is clear that Ofsted are looking for schools to see e-safety as a whole school issue.

To find out how your school would fair against the Ofsted standards considered outstanding or inadequate, start by asking yourself these 5 questions.

How would your school respond?

Following an inspection audit, St Wilfrid's School's Digital Leaders teacher (and E-safety Support Premium Plus member) commented:

The e-safety part of the review left the inspector with no matters for concern or improvement; she said that ‘we didn’t seem to realise how good we actually were as a school’. She loved our parental engagement ideas and other things that I have in the pipeline. In the final report she wrote against the ‘E-safety’ section that we ‘exceeded Ofsted e-Safety requirements by far’ and the last word was ‘Congratulations’. We’ve obviously done some good work, but thanks and congratulations should go in part to your good selves also.

We would love to hear how your school would respond to the Ofsted 5 question - Complete our anonymous 5 e-safety questions survey to let us know.