SUMMIT — Keeping kids from texting at the dinner table seems like yesterday's problem, as school officials and parents struggle to keep kids' faces off the Internet.

New technology is posing new problems for schools across the state, said New Jersey School Boards Association spokesman Mike Yaple, saying school officials a generation ago didn’t have to worry about bullying in the real world and online.

The difficulty lies in balancing students’ privacy and constitutional concerns, he said.

In Summit, the school board is considering adding one paragraph to four policies to ask that people who attend school functions, like athletic events and plays, not share photos or videos of students online through websites like Facebook and YouTube.

Officials acknowledge they cannot enforce the request.

"We’re trying to build awareness," said Summit Superintendent Nathan Parker. "A lot of parents don’t want their children to end up on YouTube."

The four Summit policies have been approved once by the school board and will be heard again for a second reading, in July.

"As nice as the technology is sometimes, it raises a lot of privacy concerns about how information is shared," he said. "Is anything private? Et cetera."

This comes as state lawmakers consider a bill that would ban photographs or recordings of children when "a reasonable parent or guardian would not expect his child to be the subject of such reproduction."

The bill, which is still in committee, stems from an incident last summer where a 63-year-old man was caught taping children at a Ringwood swim meet. He told police he found 8 to 10 year old girls sexy and was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Although the charges were later dropped, parents there were outraged.

Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety, the country’s oldest and largest nonprofit internet safety group, said she believes this policy is the first of its kind in both the U.S. and Canada, adding she believes it’s a great way to protect kids.

"We’ve had a lot of creeps who show up at these events and take up-skirt photos," she said.

In affluent communities like Summit, Aftab said, online predators may use children to get to their parents.

"They run big corporations. They’re celebrities," she said. "Their kids could easily be targeted by kidnappers."

Related coverage:

• Some N.J. lawmakers target people who photograph children without parental consent

• N.J. Assembly panel considers bill outlawing photographing children without parental consent