SoylentNews

It’s time to face the naked truth. According to the New York Daily News the latest celebrity phone hacking scandal hasn't stopped or even slowed people down from taking naked selfies. In fact the McAfee security company’s 2014 Love, Relationships & Technology survey reveals that 54% of their respondents regularly send or receive intimate photos, videos, texts and emails, and that number spikes to 70% when it comes to those aged 18 to 24. "I can only think of two people my age who haven't done it. It becomes like a sort of weird correspondence. If I snapchat someone a pic, they would send one back," says Julia, a 22-year-old English student, "It's sort of like a flirty thing, you meet a boy on a night out, you'd snapchat him a picture instead of texting him."

“If you’re taking selfies on a regular basis, that is going to get boring,” says John Suler, a member of the editorial board for the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. “So it becomes more risque, and that eventually leads to nude photos.” The desire to capture the naked body and share it with others is nothing new. “Every new medium that comes along, from cave paintings onward, no sooner does the medium get invented then people start using it for nudes,” says Robert Thompson, a pop-culture historian at Syracuse University. “We’ve found very explicit nude paintings on the walls of Pompeii.” While abstaining from taking nudies altogether is the only way to guarantee they won’t leak, it’s not a realistic approach for many. It’s more practical to password protect your phone and photo storage, doublecheck the recipient before hitting “send,” and to only sext someone you trust completely. “We have decided that the things we like to do online are things we like so much that we’re willing to take the risk,” says Thompson. “I know my credit card is not totally secure anywhere online... but I am willing to take that chance because I want to be able to order things online.”