&

A couple of years ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt joked that everyone growing up now should change their name when they’re 21. But perhaps there will come a point when we’ll all have something awkward or even potentially damaging about us on the Web, and if it’s public for everyone, then maybe we’re protected by the crowd, all of us living out our most embarrassing moments, one Google search at a time, in front of one another.

It seems incredibly rash and stupid to send a naked picture of yourself over a cell phone, but you’re sending it originally to someone you trust. This is a friend or a guy you like. It’s not someone you’re expecting to be betrayed by.

But the problem is that once these pictures are in existence, it’s all too easy for them to get forwarded on, and then they become fodder for gossip and the kind of salacious scandal that we all are kind of addicted to, and teenagers perhaps most of all.