Among my friends, the only people who don’t indulge in selfies are those who still just have mobile phones, not smartphones. Those who have a phone with a more or less normal camera and Instagram have sent at least one selfie into this world. For me personally, a selfie used to be something like salvation, that is, here I am in some wonderful place, but there is no one nearby, and I really want a photo of myself against its background, so I had to get out of it (sometimes in the literal sense of the word), to capture this moment. However, now this type of photography has become so popular that psychologists have become interested in it, and some have even classified it as a mental disorder. So is the selfie a painful manifestation of narcissism or a way of self-expression, and how can overindulgence in this form of self-expression affect your life?
Psychologists' opinion
According to psychologists, most selfies have a sexual connotation, and their purpose is to attract attention and create an image that is often completely inconsistent with reality.
In principle, this is logical, since Instagram is a social network, which means it is quite suitable for creating the desired virtual image. People who are too carried away by this type of self-expression begin to feel depressed if they collect too few likes, if they receive bad comments, or if someone they know has collected more attention.
Peggy Drexler, Ph.D., a research psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, wrote an entire article and gave examples of revelations shared by selfie-takers. Some do it to feel more confident, like Sarabeth, 40, a director of operations at a media company. Lena Dunham thus protests against Hollywood beauty standards, taking selfies under the slogan “Love me for who I am” (sometimes in the nude). The listed selfies in moderation are not a deviation, but if we are talking about huge quantities and obsession, then problems begin.
Negative sides
Yet selfies are an obsession with appearance and a manifestation of narcissism. People feel like the main characters of the reality show “Behind the Glass” with inflated self-esteem. It's like looking at yourself in the mirror all day. Research has shown that taking too many selfies can have a negative impact on your relationships within the family (or with a loved one), raising children, the work environment, and also cause outbursts of violence.
Another study has shown that an excessive passion for posting self-portraits (that is, selfies) on the Internet leads to the fact that in reality a person becomes less attractive to others, the degree of warmth in real relationships also decreases and people move away from each other.
Positive aspects, or How to use selfies for good
- However, not everything is so gloomy, since in skillful hands and with the right approach, selfies can be a wonderful tool for working on yourself. They can help you understand yourself, open up new qualities and spaces for creativity, and also allow a person to be multifaceted.
- A selfie doesn’t necessarily sell a specific person. It may well sell a brand, show new fashion trends, or have a certain artistic value if it is not just people doing it to satisfy their vanity, but real creators.
- Celebrity selfies make their fans feel closer to their idols. Stars share a piece of their lives, write responses and create an impression of relative closeness with their fans. Whether this is good or bad for the fans is difficult for me to judge, but for the stars it is definitely good.
- Also, selfies can influence modern ideals of beauty and show how beautiful naturalness can be, and not these images corrected first with makeup and then with Photoshop (for example, photos before and after makeup).
- And finally, selfies can act as a personal chronicler. They show your history of change and development, remind you of the past and can help you avoid past mistakes. If translated into normal language, these are thoughts in the style of “Hmm, red color obviously doesn’t suit me...”, “What a terrible haircut!”, “Mommies, who is this?!”, “So, you need to remember that after the second glass beer, you need to hide your phone! And so on and so forth. ;)
- I almost forgot about sports selfies in the “before and after” style - it’s also very motivating!
Some observations and statistics
I went to Instagram and searched for the hashtag #selfie to understand the scale of the disaster. As a result, I got this picture:
By the time I finished writing the article, the number for the #selfie hashtag had changed from 151,691,246 to 151,713,655, that is, in about an hour, 22,409 photos with this hashtag appeared. How many such photos actually appeared (not everyone uses the necessary hashtags) - one can only guess.
It may seem that not only narcissistic celebrities, but also quite ordinary people are engaged in this hobby. A PicMonkey blog survey suggests that nearly half of all US adults have taken a selfie at least once. Of the total number of photos on Instagram, for example, 3–5% can be classified as a selfshot. So what is the secret to the rise in popularity of selfies?
Of course, the rise in popularity of selfies is linked to the boom in social media and mobile technology. Most smartphones have front-facing cameras, which have made taking selfies easy and enjoyable. But what is the root cause of the global selfie obsession? Firstly, with the help of such photographs a person can satisfy his psychological hunger in search of self-identification, as in real life, and in virtual space. Like many other efforts made for this purpose, self-shots help a person assert that he is an individual, and this habit is part of being human. In other words, to rephrase Descartes’ statement: “I take a selfie, therefore I exist.” The user’s selfie conveys the message that he lives a rich, beautiful social life; It's rare that selfies are taken during unhappy moments.
Researcher Jennifer Oullette, author of Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self, says: “Your Facebook page, for example, is one giant statement of self-identity.” . This is exactly how you want to be perceived. To put it more pretentiously, this is a form of your personal performance... I think that a selfie is definitely a way of saying “Here I am.” It is also a kind of mirror that people turn to for the same purposes.”
Excessive selfie sharing can lead to decreased intimacy among friends and romantic partners
Researchers found that out of more than 1.1 million photos on Instagram, photos with human faces were 38% more likely to be liked by users than photos with no faces at all. Additionally, these photos are 32% more likely to attract comments. “Adults, like babies, like to look at faces,” said Saide Bakshi, who led the study. - Faces are powerful channels of nonverbal communication. We monitor them constantly in a variety of contexts; they attract us because they convey emotion and human identity.” According to experts, the study makes it possible to improve the marketing strategy of companies on social networks, and can also help designers select those visual images that will receive the greatest response from users. Experts also proved a rather obvious thing: the popularity of a photo also depends on the number of followers and how often the user posts such messages.
Statistical analysis of selfies
Selfies are being taken in such large numbers that it has become possible to perform a statistical analysis of these images. A group of developers and scientists, with the participation of the City University of New York and the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Sciences, created a detailed interactive infographic about the differences and features of selfies in Moscow, New York, Berlin, Sao Paulo and Bangkok. The interactive project proposes to study the dependencies between gender, age, place of residence, as well as the pose of the selfie takers, their mood, head tilt and several other parameters.
Several trends are particularly noteworthy, including the fact that, regardless of location, women post selfies more often than men. And if in Berlin the number of “female” photographs exceeds the number of “male” ones by 1.9 times, then in Moscow women post selfies 4.6 times more often than men. Moscow, according to the developers, is also the least “smiling” city: if in Bangkok the number of selfshots with a smile is 68% of the total, then in Moscow this figure reaches only 53%. The researchers also noted a tendency to tilt the head when taking selfies. In their opinion, women do this one and a half times more often than men. The trend is especially true in Sao Paulo, where the average head tilt in a selfshot reaches 16.9 degrees.
What will the selfie craze lead to?
The world's first selfie. You can find out a little more about it
There has always been a desire to document life, to leave traces of one’s existence for posterity. and selfies are just another round of its development. “There is a primal human urge to look at ourselves from the outside,” said writer Clive Thompson, author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. Instead of dismissing selfie-mania as a dull form of exhibitionism or just another stupid pastime for the millennial generation, let's try to see something good in these self-portraits. This visual diary is, after all, a way to mark our short existence. For now we can only fantasize, but it looks like in a few years self-shots may turn into something completely different. For example, in interactive virtual messages that can be stored indefinitely, even after your death.
Researcher Jacqueline Mori offers her picture of the future:“My great-great-grandchildren can easily come and talk to me. And maybe I will look like an 8-bit video game to them, but it will still be as charming as looking at black and white photographs.” These forecasts today no longer seem like something fantastic. A week ago, Facebook bought Oculus VR, promising to present the world with a revolutionary social platform that will revolutionize the previous understanding of virtual communication.
Probably, the universal obsession with selfies can also adjust the standards of the ideal of beauty, making it closer to reality. And, perhaps, the most important thing is that this phenomenon once again makes us understand that the most important thing in this world is, first of all, ourselves, people.
The phenomenon of selfie addiction (Selfie is a type of self-portrait, photographing oneself) is not new. The desire to express oneself is a natural human need, it’s just that before he did not have so many technical capabilities and channels for posting visual information about himself. For example, before the invention of the camera, this desire was satisfied with the help of hand-drawn self-portraits, memoirs and autobiographies.
Now all possible services for creating selfies are available to the network user, for example, Snapchat or Shots of Me. A real revolution in this hobby was made by the launch of the popular Instagram service.
In this regard, scientists began to worry about the question of how dependent a person is on modern technologies and gadgets: smartphones, selfie sticks, action cameras and other frequently used items.
Opponents of the “selfie” are convinced that the need to photograph oneself in various situations is nothing more than a complex and lack of self-confidence, and in advanced cases, even a manifestation.
However, experts in the field of psychology fundamentally disagree with this formulation of the problem. Selfies have many advantages, they say:
- Selfie – great way self-knowledge and introspection. Many psychological trainings It is advised to take photographs of yourself every day for a long time. Looking at the photo, a person sees himself from the outside: he clearly sees the parameters of his appearance, tracks his emotions. Based on such statistical data, it is easier for a person to make vital decisions;
- Mobile selfies can become a diary of sports achievements. Many online fitness marathons insist that participants take daily photos of themselves in training to record their progress. This motivational trick only benefits them: knowing that hundreds of subscribers are following your “selfies” on the social network, the person will not give up classes and will continue to improve themselves;
- Selfie as a way of visual communication. Photographs are perceived easier and faster than long pieces of text, but at the same time, they say a lot about a person: they literally reveal him “in full view”;
- Selfie like social tool . IN last years Various online actions to help other people have become widespread: the photographs taken, in this case, act as evidence of complicity in the event;
- Numerous selfies from events, celebrations, and travel especially have no downsides. In addition, social networks are a more reliable option for storing photos than a flash drive and HDD computer.
Selfie addiction as a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive neurosis
Despite all the positive aspects, the selfie culture has found many opponents. In particular, experts from the American Psychiatric Association argue that addiction to selfies is a mental disorder.
Selfie addiction has been called a subtype;(obsessive-compulsive disorder). A person can photograph himself more than a hundred times every day, in a vain attempt to find “that” photo worthy of everyone’s viewing on a social network.
Such people feel deep dissatisfaction with their lives: with their family, themselves and their children, career successes, etc. Selfies play the role of compensation for them: they can create the desired image, successful and happy. They react extremely sharply to the reaction of subscribers, and frantically count the “likes” under each photo: the more positive reviews in their direction, the better they feel.
In the practice of foreign psychiatrists, it is not the first year that we have encountered patients with advanced forms of this psychological dependence. Thus, the Mirror published real story a young man named Danny Bowman who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He spent many hours every day photographing himself and, after a while, at the peak of his feelings, provoked by dissatisfaction with himself and the photographs, he attempted suicide.
Psychiatrist David Vale has a more radical view of the problem: in his opinion, all of the above problems are to blame modern technologies, as well as their availability to a wide range of people.
Extreme culture Selfie
There are countless cases where, while trying to take the so-called “epic selfie,” people have been injured, sometimes even incompatible with life.
In the process of catching a “successful shot,” people lose their instinct of self-preservation. This pushes them to do rash things: jumping from roof to roof, stunts on the edge of a skyscraper without insurance, and so on.
For example, Australian resident Terry Tufferson risked his life for a photo in front of a powerful tornado. The young man miraculously remained unharmed, however, his negative example is a visual aid for inexperienced teenagers who are ready to do anything to encourage their peers.
Often, for the sake of a good shot, people break the law: not so long ago, the whole world heard the story of a young student who climbed to the top of the Cheops pyramid for a photograph.
Spectacular pictures caused a huge number of accidents, and therefore video hosting YouTube was flooded with video reviews tagged “deadly selfie.”
Of course, not all truly breathtaking photographs were taken by people with mental disabilities. Many photos are taken by professional stuntmen, rope jumpers, pilots and other representatives of dangerous professions and hobbies.
Selfie as a new level of development of narcissism
Some researchers call the hobby of selfie an updated, evolved form of narcissism.
In particular, famous writer Clive Thompson believes that the modern "exacerbation" of this form of narcissism is a direct consequence of the technological revolution.
Thompson believes that in the future, a person’s narcissism will only progress: a new stage in this process is online services that eternally save visual images of specific people. In the near future, various sociological and anthropological studies will be carried out on the basis of these services.
How to get rid of selfie addiction
Essentially, everyone who posts pictures online wants to be seen and approved. Don't blame technological progress, high-quality mobile cameras and social networks. Selfies are a normal practice of perpetuating one’s image in the media space: it’s just a matter of a sense of proportion.
Selfie addiction is not yet included in the official list. Accordingly, methods for treating such addiction (as well as addiction to computer games). The only correct measure to combat this condition is behavioral therapy.
There is no need to break your smartphone and throw your expensive camera out the window: the number of photo sessions should decrease gradually. In order not to create emptiness, information vacuum, it is important for the patient to saturate his free time interesting activities, find a hobby or engage in physical activity.
The world is technically developing at a rapid pace, and this fact leaves its mark on its inhabitants. Since people are the engines of progress and initiators, it is up to them to respond. Since ancient times, scientists and geniuses of the past have been looking for ways to capture images in simpler ways than drawing. And this is not surprising, because we are always looking for easy ways to solve our problems. One of the consequences was the “selfie disease.”
Selfie addiction among different segments of the world's population
If you look at photography superficially, its goal is to capture the area captured by the camera lens in a certain period of time. For a person, this image can serve as a key to memories of the past. Namely, they give rise to deep feelings of sadness and joy in people, evoke emotions, capture the spirit and play with the imagination. As for the development of photography in general for art and culture, this is a huge leap forward for many areas of science and technology. From a photograph you can find a person, place, or thing that has ever disappeared. IN modern world photography has become an integral part of human life. Social networks are filled with millions of photos, mostly taken by yourself. This phenomenon already exists proper name- selfie. The disease of the 21st century has taken over the whole world. It affected not only students and teenagers, as newspapers and magazines say, but also an older category of people. Presidents, the Pope, famous actresses and actors, singers - absolutely everyone can be seen taking selfies on the social network.
What is most striking is that even with significant social status taking a selfie. For example, a self-portrait of Barack Obama at a funeral in a cheerful mood caused a lot of controversy. And the photo is the premiere Russian Federation Medvedev in the elevator received more than three hundred thousand tweets on Twitter. While the majority of people are delighted with such open actions on the part of the government, scientists are seriously puzzled by the problem of the 21st century, which has already been called the “selfie disease.”
Selfie is translated from English as “himself” or “yourself”. This is a photo taken with a camera mobile phone, tablet. The image has character traits, for example, a reflection in a mirror is captured. The word “selfie” first became popular in early 2000 and again in 2010.
History of the selfie
The first selfies were taken with a Kodak Brownie camera from Kodak. They were made using a tripod, standing in front of a mirror, or at arm's length. The second option was more complicated. It is known that one of the first selfies was taken by Princess Romanova at the age of thirteen. She was the first teenager to take such a photo for her friend. Nowadays, “selfies” do everything, and the question arises: is a selfie a disease or entertainment? After all, many people take photographs of themselves every day and post them on social network. As for the origin of the word “selfie,” it came to us from Australia. In 2002, the ABC channel first used this term.
Are selfies simple, innocent fun?
The desire to photograph yourself to some extent does not have any unpleasant consequences. This is a manifestation of love for one’s appearance, the desire to please others, which is characteristic of almost all women. But daily photographs of food, legs, yourself with alcoholic drinks and other intimate moments of personal life exposed to society - this is uncontrollable behavior that entails far from innocent consequences.
This behavior is especially frightening on the part of children as young as 13 years old. Teenagers on social networks seem to have not been raised by their parents at all. Self-photography can be innocent fun only when the photos are taken rarely and do not have erotic overtones or other sociological deviations. Society, having its own culture and spiritual values, goes downhill with such thoughtless behavior. By flaunting their genitals, teenagers doom the future of our species to the absence of moral and ethical standards in society.
Are selfies a mental illness?
American scientists have come to the conclusion that self-portraits from a mobile phone, which are regularly posted on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and other lesser-known resources, attract attention and mental disorder. The selfie disease has spread throughout the world and affected people of different age groups. People who are constantly looking for a bright photograph are gradually going crazy, and some even die for the sake of an extreme shot. It's a real disease to take selfies every day.
Types of selfies
Scientists have identified three degrees of this mental disorder:
- Episodic: characterized by having no more than three photos daily without posting on social networks. Such a disorder can still be controlled, and it can be treated with willpower and awareness of one’s actions.
- Acute: a person takes more than three pictures a day and necessarily shares them on Internet resources. A high degree of mental disorder - the person photographing himself does not control his actions.
- Chronic: the most difficult case, absolutely beyond human control. More than ten photos are taken daily and published on social networks. A person takes pictures anywhere! This is the clearest proof that there is a selfie disease. What is it called in medicine? Actually, it was in honor of the photo that she was named, although social networks, which are also a kind of addiction, play a minor role here.
Taking selfies in public
There are already dozens of poses for photographing yourself in society, and now they have a name. The selfie disease continues to spread in society, despite scientists’ statements about the danger and television programs on this topic. Here are the most fashionable selfie poses of 2015:
Articles and Lifehacks
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Twenty years ago, few could have imagined how many different types of entertainment young people would have by now. Moreover, most of them are associated with the rapid development of digital technologies, as well as the increasing availability and mobility of devices based on them.
Few of those who are at least under forty today have not heard the foreign word “selfie.” At least on TV, in connection with some regular scandal that offends someone’s feelings.
But we will not get involved in these squabbles: if a person has firmly decided to do some nasty thing, he will be able to use the most seemingly harmless means for this. We are much more interested in what kind of animal this selfie is, and what it is eaten with.
Formally speaking, this is a photographic self-portrait, that is, a photograph of a person that he takes himself with the help of special devices. At the same time, this concept also includes group photos, in which one of those present in the picture acts as a photographer.
As a rule, the central figure of a selfie is the photographer himself, which is ensured by his pose, facial expression and other means. But often the landmark or landscape serving as the background of the photo takes on the dominant role.
A lot depends on who takes the self-portrait and why. This is done not only by young and adult people, but also by teenagers, children, and once there was even a recorded case of... monkeys taking pictures of themselves!
Yes, yes, many people remember the story that happened to photographer David Slater in the jungles of Sulawesi in 2011. The crested baboons he was filming showed their quarrelsome nature and took the naturalist’s working tool.
As a result, several photographs were taken by the five-armed monsters.
In general, the purpose of such images can be divided into several groups. The nature of the photo, its composition and quality depend on it.
When did the selfie first appear, and when did they start calling it that?
The very phenomenon of photographic self-portrait appeared, probably, from the moment manufacturers released the first more or less portable cameras, i.e., at the beginning of the 20th century.They were usually mounted on a three-legged tripod, and filming was carried out using a mirror. There is a well-known portrait of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, who photographed herself in this way at the age of 13.
This was done 4 years before the death of the daughter of the last Russian emperor along with her family in the basement of the Ipatiev House, in 1914.
The word “selfie” itself was first mentioned on one of the Australian Internet forums in 2002. It can probably be considered a coincidence that the first camera phone released appeared around this period.
And by 2013 it finally left the category of slang and was registered in the Oxford Dictionary in English, thus turning into a neologism.
What do you need to take a selfie?
In the simplest case, this requires nothing more than any device equipped with a camera. After all, you can take a picture simply by holding the phone with your hand.
Children often do just that. Of course, the resulting photo is unlikely to win prizes in competitions, but what is usually important for children is not the result, but the process itself, isn’t it? Yes, and as a reminder in Family album it will do just fine.
Those who are seriously interested in this type of photography approach their equipment much more thoroughly. Pictures are taken with a digital camera or camera phone - a smartphone equipped with a high-resolution matrix.
It is also necessary to use tripods, among which there are many light and small-sized models. The most popular is the so-called selfie stick.
This simple and convenient device is a rod, at one end of which a camera or smartphone is attached, and at the other there is a handle with a shutter button. Sometimes such tripods are equipped with a mirror, which allows you to see yourself and choose a more convenient angle.
When folded, they easily fit into a bag, and when unfolded, they allow you to take photos from a distance of up to 1 meter. As a rule, the tripod is equipped with mounts suitable for most types of modern smartphones, and the smartphones themselves provide the ability to work with such devices via Bluetooth or a headphone input.
There are also portable three-legged tripods, which are very useful in some cases. For example, when the photographer’s hands must be in the frame and free, or when shooting from unusual angles.
Additional lighting sources are also sometimes used when selfies are taken indoors or in the dark.
It all depends on what exactly you want to achieve when taking a photo. But we will try to give some general recommendations.
Is a selfie dangerous?
As you know, in such matters there are so many people, so many opinions. But many psychiatrists seriously consider this activity to be a social disease. In their opinion, the craving for this hobby can be caused by narcissism or the presence of various complexes.
However, you should seriously sound the alarm only if a person close to you takes an abnormally large number of photographs with themselves in the leading role. There is a known case where this ended in the suicide of a teenager who was disappointed in his ability to take a perfect self-portrait.
A much greater danger is choosing the wrong place or object for a selfie. There are known cases when lovers of self-portraits fell from high-rise buildings, fell under the wheels of a car, or died from a shot from a loaded weapon put to their temple.
Other dangers include wild animals, poisonous reptiles and dangerous terrain. For example, in Barnaul, a girl who decided to take a photo with a tiger was injured by its claws.
But even if a fan of self-portraits isn't into such extreme backdrops for their photos, the danger still exists.
Those who take photographs of themselves too often often become as if out of this world, scatter their attention and lose touch with reality. The result could be, for example, a car accident.
However, in general, not everything is so gloomy. Such dangers threaten mainly poor people who need the help of a psychologist, or even a psychiatrist, without taking photographs.
For the majority, this activity is a completely innocent hobby, as well as an additional means of communication. Pictures can be shared with friends via Facebook, VKontakte or a specialized social network for images, Instagram.
A successfully captured moment or a talentedly chosen pose will say no less about you to your loved ones and acquaintances than many words.
It is also worth noting the selfies that celebrities often take. This allows their fans to feel closer to their adored idol, to gain access to a piece of his life. However, not only pop and movie stars like to take pictures of themselves.
For example, just a few years ago, in 2013, Pope Francis posted a selfie taken with people visiting the Vatican for his online fans. A year later, a photo of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was published on Instagram.
