MERIDIAN, Miss.– Five high school students are suspended after a teacher filed felony charges accusing them of posting and sharing a damaging, digitally altered picture on the internet.

“A girl took a picture in an art teacher’s classroom,” said Melissa Rawson, the mother of one of the students. “And Photoshopped (the teacher’s computer) to look like porn.”

Rawson said the incident started with students sharing the image over the social media app Snapchat, a mobile messaging service that allows users to send and receive multimedia messages that disappear after being viewed.

Lauderdale County, Mississippi School District Assistant Superintendent Ed Mosley said that the five students involved would be given due process after a full investigation. 

With the expansion of social media, student-teacher relationships have evolved. An online post could lead to a lawsuit, like one in Minnesota where a student won a $420,000 settlement after being suspended over a tweet he posted claiming to have made out with one of his teachers. 

In Mississippi, the charge of posting a libelous message, which includes bullying or “revenge porn” (or sharing intimate photos of former partners without their permission), can carry a punishment of up to five years in prison as well as a $10,000 fine.

In 2014, the Mississippi legislature added these punishments, redefining cyberbullying, cyberstalking and other computer crimes. In the same year, Attorney General Jim Hood started an initiative to educate students about the charge and its possible consequences.

“There seems to be a disturbing trend among our youth to say hateful and injurious things to one another while trying to hide behind what they believe to be the anonymity of the internet and its many applications,” Hood said in a 2014 statement. “As both a father and Attorney General, I am hoping we can make a difference by educating our students on the law and on law enforcement’s ability to track online posts.”

Downard writes for the Mississippi, Meridian Star.