It’s garnered thousands of clicks — a smartphone video of a young teen bicyclist popping wheelies and playing chicken in traffic on Yosemite Avenue.

The dangerous and irresponsible behavior is what Sara Christensen hopes the Thomas Toy Community Center can help discourage when it opens next year.

And the dangerous  behavior isn’t limited to the potential to get struck.

It’s the posting of shenanigans on social media that — depending upon the severity of what is shown — could haunt those in uploaded videos for the rest of their lives.

“It is out there forever,” Sara Christensen, executive director of the community center being designed for teens from seventh through 12th grade, told Manteca Rotarians meeting Thursday at Ernie’s Rendezvous Room.

Christensen noted there are endless instances where people have had videos they’ve posted on social media when they were younger come back and haunt them.

“(Social media postings) can cost people their dream jobs or even make it hard for them to get a job at all,” she said.

The center — targeted to open in the two-story building on the southeast corner of Yosemite and Fremont avenues just a  block from Manteca High next year — will feature a state-of-the-art studio for creating  social media complete with a sound-proof room.

The goal is to get teens hooked on making and posting videos the opportunity to make them of better quality to more effectively connect with people and learn skills that could lead to employment given the explosion in social media related jobs. At the same time, the center wants to use the opportunity to share the importance of using social media in a positive manner.

As such, the social media studio endeavor — one of many potential programs — reflects what the teen center is about

Christensen said the plan is to rely on volunteer mentors to share their passion and skills in a bid to not just to help give teens direction but to connect them with the overall community.

Other skills that could be shared run the gamut from checking oil, changing tires, playing guitar and even how to fish to  cooking and nutritional food choices.

The exact programming will be determined by what teens express interest in and what volunteers can be lined up.

The center will have an activities room, a café for informal gathering, and well as other spaces where informal mentoring classes on various skills can take place.

Christensen believes the pandemic has done two things.   

It has prompted many teens to “look for something” that was lost being unable to connect with others when the pandemic shit down schools and other activities.

At the same time, she believes a growing number of youth are starting to get their fill of the amount of time they are spending on social media and are ready to explore other alternatives.

“You’ve got to remember what happened during the pandemic,” she said. “There were kids who were learning to read by watching a computer screen.”

Christensen noted that 75 percent of the teens within a 15-minute walking/bicycling distance of the Toy Community Center are part of struggling families.

The center is planned to eventually serve all teens in Manteca. Christensen noted that the initial effort, though, will specifically target those that have relatively easy access although the center is on a Manteca Transit bus  route.

Christensen said the Toy Community Center isn’t competing with similar nonprofits in Manteca such as the Boys & Girls Club as well as Give Every Child a Chance — but rather to work with them to serve youth.

She  encourages people who are interested in helping — whether it is with ideas, indicating they’d be willing  to volunteer or whatever it might be — to fill out the “contact us” form on the bottom of the home page of the Thomas Toy Community Center webpage at thomastoycc.com.

The faith-based organization wants to be able to use the space when it is not used by teens such as school day mornings for other endeavors aimed at helping single moms and similar efforts.

The message to Manteca as a whole is also clear — it is about the community working together. It is about teens being part of the greater community.

“By investing in youth,” Christensen  noted last month, “you are investing in the community.”

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com