A California appeals court is upholding the juvenile-court conviction of a 16-year-old high school boy who uploaded a 10-second video to Snapchat of a fellow high school student who appeared to be masturbating in a bathroom stall.

"I think this dude is jacking off," read the video's caption.

The teen's misdemeanor invasion of privacy charges stem from what he said was him merely playing a joke on another student "to get a laugh." The boy on the receiving end was joking around, too, not really masturbating but pretending to, according to a juvenile witness. But in the end, that didn't matter. The boy who was filmed by the mobile phone committed suicide two weeks later, leaving a note behind: "I can't handle school anymore and I have no friends."

The incident is a reminder that youths may not understand the power of the technology that most are carrying in their pockets, and it's a dark testament to video being more powerful than words.

The video in question was taken inside the bathroom at University City High in San Diego County and was shot about 20 feet away from the bathroom stall. It did not show the face of the victim, identified in court documents as Matthew. However, the court noted that the video revealed "his distinctive socks and shoes, which were visible in the gap between the stall wall and the floor."

The teen defendant, identified in court papers as M.H., was sentenced to 60 days probation and was barred from social media. "We are going to come back in 60 days. I'm going to see how you are doing. If I have any more problems with you, you are going into custody," the juvenile judge told the boy at his sentencing hearing.

The boy appealed, saying he had committed no crime for his 2013 filming. The three-judge appeals court did not agree in a unanimous opinion. (PDF)

A student in a high school bathroom stall reasonably expects he will not be videoed and have that video disseminated on social media. Matthew did not forfeit that right merely because his socks and shoes could be seen and his voice could be heard by others in the bathroom. Matthew may have run the risk that people in the bathroom would tell others what they witnessed there. But that is a far cry from expecting his conduct would be electronically recorded and broadcasted to the student body. Thus, M.H.'s main appellate argument fails because the right to privacy is not one of total secrecy, but rather the right to control the nature and extent of firsthand dissemination.

The teen defendant posted the video to Snapchat stories, and it disappeared 24 hours later. But it went viral around the school. The dead boy's mother told the court that "everyone was talking about him in the video."

The video uploader came to the attention of the authorities, according to court documents, when the defendant confronted a student at the dead boy's funeral, threatening to "kick his ass" if he didn't stop telling people he took the video. The kid on the receiving end of the threat alerted school officials who, in turn, notified the police. The uploader then confessed to the authorities that he uploaded the video. According to the appeals court, the boy told the cops that he "felt terrible for what had happened."

The police could not recover the video from the boy's mobile phone. A witness helped the authorities prepare what the court termed as a "re-creation of the video." It was admitted as evidence without an objection from the uploader's counsel.

The appeals court, in its analysis, did not take into account whether the video prompted the victim to commit suicide. The court wrote that the suicide note said: "P.S. I've been planning this for months now."

The defendant argued that Matthew had "waived" his expectation of privacy by "making loud and obscene noises," and that Matthew deliberately attracted public attention "by making loud masturbation noises."

"We disagree. There are degrees and nuances to expectations of privacy," the court ruled. "The possibility of being seen or overheard by others in the bathroom does not render unreasonable a student's expectation that his conduct in a bathroom stall will not be secretly recorded and uploaded to social media."

On appeal, the defendant argued for the first time that he had a First Amendment right to upload the video. The boy claimed that his recording of Matthew was "a matter of concern to his school community," in the "public interest," and amounted to constitutionally protected "news gathering." He maintained that Matthew was engaged in an unlawful act of masturbating in public, and the uploader caught him in the act.

The appeals court declined to entertain that argument, however. The court noted that, on direct appeal, rarely do appellate courts deal with claims that were not vetted at trial.

"Considering an issue for the first time on appeal is often unfair to the trial court, unjust to the opposing party, and contrary to judicial economy because it encourages the embedding of reversible error through silence in the trial court," the court concluded.