The texting society is always coming up with new and creative ways to communicate – from abbreviations, to emoticons, to…sexting.

Sexting now plays a major role in any relationship. It starts with harmless flirting, and eventually leads to explicit conversations, and in some cases, exchange of photos.

Nude and “dick pics” have become quite normal recently; they’ve been extremely popularized by the rise of texting applications, or picture sharing ones – like Snap Chat – and people usually think they could get away with it because of the privacy settings.

Sexting is also a way for people, especially teenagers, to explore their sexuality. The young folks think it’s the most harmless way to experiment with sexuality, and feel “wanted” by their people of interest. It might be true, but doing that might actually be dumber than experimenting with sex itself. Morally, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing this behind a screen or in real life.

Being in the nude is being in the nude; it doesn’t matter which way

While it’s not our place to say what’s right and what’s wrong, morally, the over use of sexting and exchange of nude photos doesn’t usually end well! The internet is never safe, and people should never be trusted in general.

The internet is not a safe place

Look at Snap Chat, for instance. I assume we’re all familiar with the data leak that happened earlier this week when a bunch of hackers got access to the database and leaked, literally, every single picture that was sent on the application.

Another incident was the unfortunate celebrities’ iCloud hack. Yes, some of the biggest names in the world, including Ariana Grande, Jennifer Laurence, and Kate Upton and many more, had their clouds hacked, and their nudes leaked online. These celebrities usually have their accounts more secured than the regular users, yet they somehow got hacked.

Let’s not forget the “Pink Meth” page – a page that was on the Deepweb and had nudes of women, along with all their personal information (address, numbers, job, etc.) They were all published by the ones the pictures were sent to, or got hacked.

Boys love to carry some bragging badges

Pink Meth was one of the biggest examples of the “Revenge porn” phenomena, but it’s not the only one. People have shared nude pictures of past lovers, or even current ones, for as long as the internet existed. Other than sharing online, some kids, or even so-called men, show pictures to their friends to brag about who they slept or haven’t slept with.

And girls, full on frontal nude is not the same as a dick pic

Many girls think they’re safe because the guy they sent the nude to sent them a dick pic. Here’s the thing. A faceless dick pic is not the same as your nude. It’s not really rocket science, and you can’t in a million years guarantee your safety because you too have a picture of the guy. Not to mention…

You’re in Egypt, welcome to the slut shaming society!

We need tens or even hundreds of years to abolish the slut shaming mentality from our society. When a woman’s picture is leaked, everyone loses it, along with the respect for the woman. When a guy’s picture is leaked, our reaction is mostly a “meh” and that’s about it.

You’d think that by now people have realized how dumb it is to send nudes, or allow them to be taken by their boyfriends, or even husbands, yet somehow they still do. Remember that one “harmless” picture could haunt you forever!