If you’re building a tech product that has
anything to do with photos then you’re
probably feeling an uncomfortable sense of
déjà vu lately, and it has to do with data
security.
It had become so routine that throughout the
fall it was hard to imagine a Monday without
hearing about another set of iCloud photos
that been hacked during the weekend.
And these aren’t just typical pictures of the
girl down the street or the guy next door .
Apple/iCloud products were at risk for getting
hacked, but they aren’t the only ones. So was
Snapchat, and probably all other major sites
hosting photos. Scandals have been popping
up again and again around hacked photos,
especially nude ones. So, why do we keep
seeing these scandals? There are two
opposing camps trying to explain why we’re
having nude photo leaks, but who’s right?
One group says something like, “Enough,
children. Want to stop nude photos from
getting hacked? Keep your clothes on in
selfies and the problem will go away by itself.”
Those on the other side of the debate insist
we must not blame the victim and instead
should demand better privacy protections for
iCloud and other digital storage accounts.
Sound familiar? That’s because it is. We’ve
had scandals about hacked photos going back
every year for almost 10 years, and people
keep writing these same reactions after each
one.
Annually rehashing this debate for a decade
hasn’t gotten us too far. While we should
expect companies to update security features,
we can also expect hackers will continue
improving their toolkits. And as for warning
people to not take nude selfies, since when
has issuing warnings been the key to
changing behavior?
Education and warnings won’t solve problems
unless the problems were caused by lack of
knowledge.
Why, then, do people keep taking naked digital
pictures of themselves and store them in
places that could be hacked? They were
probably aware of the other nude photo
scandals that occurred so it’s not that they
don’t know what’s going on.
There’s actually a science behind why we keep
seeing these repeated nude photo scandals —
the science of social .
The truth is, sexting — sending sexually
suggestive photos or videos via cell phone —
is increasingly common among people aged
25-34. According to a recent Pew Report , 15
percent of adults ages 18-24 and 22 percent
of adults ages 25-34 admit to having sent
such a message. Knowing that, it’s less of a
surprise that in the past year, thousands of
young people have had their nude photos
hacked, including famous ones like Jennifer
Lawrence and Mila Kunis.
Are we saying, then, that this is simply a case
of peer pressure? Nope. Our research at the
UCLA Center for Digital Behavior has revealed
that our perceptions of what is normal in our
social networks affects our behavior. In one
study, college students viewed a selection of
Facebook photos of their peers and were then
asked to estimate the percentage of students
who engaged in sex without condoms and sex
with strangers, and whether they themselves
behave this way.
When students saw more sexually suggestive
photos of their peers (e.g. kissing, flirting with
the camera, wearing revealing clothing), they
reasoned that more of their peers were having
unprotected sex and sex with strangers. They
also said that they themselves planned on
having more sex without condoms and sex
with strangers.
What people think their peers are doing
(regardless of what they are actually doing)
influences their behavior. If people think their
friends are taking naked selfies and putting
these pics online (even if the truth is that their
friends are sitting at home chatting with
mom), then they will start uploading selfies in
the buff. And this psychology isn’t unique to
only youth. It affects all of human behavior.
So what should you do if you’re working on a
photo-related technology and want a solution
other than more data security to keep your
product out of the hacking spotlight? My
advice, as a behavioral psychologist, is that
adding another few lines to your legal page or
slapping on a data security warning pop-up
about the risks of photo hacking won’t work —
just like it doesn’t work for smoking, alcohol
use or most other behaviors.
You’ve got to change the social environment
to change the behavior. The short answer to
change user behavior is to build a community
around how people upload and share pictures.
Create a social norm on what types of photos
should be taken and shared using your
technology.



http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/29/the-psychology-of-the-naked-selfie/

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