COLUMBIA, SC — State Attorney General Alan Wilson said his office has refused to hire a prospective law clerk because of what that job applicant had posted on his Facebook page.

“One young man who did a really good interview, my staff looked at his Facebook page. This guy had posted a bunch of photos from a binge drinking party he’d participated in several months earlier,” said Wilson in a speech to the Columbia Rotary Club. “There were scantily clad women using dental floss as bathing suits ... they were doing all sorts of God knows what, just acting like complete knuckleheads.”

“Needless to say that young clerk did not get hired for that law clerkship,” Wilson said.

In recounting the anecdote, Wilson said he often speaks to young people at high schools, telling them that’s just one danger of being careless on Internet social media sites.

Other dangers include young people taking pornographic pictures of themselves and sending them over smartphones — an action for which a minor can be charged first with the crime of manufacturing child pornography, then possession of child pornography and distributing child pornography.

Young people also can inadvertently make themselves targets for predators by posting even apparently harmless personal information on Facebook, he said.

“I want to scare kids away from that kind of danger,” he said.