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Selfie culture is not stated to be a recent phenomenon but a means of visual communication, dating as far back as 40,000 years (Curran, 2019). Handprints in Indonesian caves are 39,000 years old, proving that we have been painting self-portraits for centuries. Fast forwarding to present day, capturing images of yourself has developed into becoming a modern trend, by self-obsessed millennials.
The meaning of selfies often depends on the social, cultural and technological context surrounding the individual. They can be taken with the intent to be incredibly imaginable, yet relentlessly repetitive.
A selfie can be considered to be the first way an individual begins to love their body and come to terms with their appearance, as well as having such a profound impact on how they feel about themselves because of the way people are judged. Capturing images of yourself has normalised the notion of self-photography as a form of expression. To an extent, many people consider it as a beautiful form of self-expression that allows them to share their emotions such as joy and despair.
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This allows a boost of confidence and an increase in self-esteem, if done in the correct way.
For example, according to a study, a smartphone camera allows people to feel better about themselves as they are more socially integrated, connecting with other people instead of isolating themselves. For teens between 13 and 17 years old, a percentage of 1 in 5 teens feel more popular, confident and more self-assured about themselves when using a social media website to share their day to day life and activities through photographs and selfies. 45% of teens say they often or sometimes post on social media, with 16% saying they do this often (Anderson, 2019).
Conversely, according to Eckler, Kalyango and Paasch's (2014) research, friends' photos and comments are more influential then celebrity shots (Strathprints.strath.ac.uk, 2019).
People who take a lot of selfies per day tend to have an exaggerated interest in self-admiration of themselves and their physical appearance. The one's who post selfies every day have an issue of being praised by others and continuously look for attention from their friends and the world, resulting in styling in weird poses and unnatural styles. The amount of comment and likes received allow the individuals to feel validated enough to feel accepted in the society of selfie culture. Experts reveal that over the years, taking selfies may potentially lead to mental health issues, particularly depression. Eckler, Kalyango and Paasch's (2014) (Strathprints.strath.ac.uk, 2019) research suggests that women, more than men, that spend more time on social media looking at selfies and other people's images, tend to compare themselves negatively with others and are reported with higher weight dissatisfaction and self-objectification.
In March 2014, a teenage "selfie addict", Danny Bowman, who allegedly spent up to 10 hours a day taking 200 selfies dropped out of school and tried to kill himself due to the fact that he could not take the perfect photo of himself. Psychologically, taking selfies is a self-oriented action which allows users to establish their individuality which is also associated with personality traits such as narcissism. While cases like Bowman's increased with the selfie trend, the rise of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression continued rise too, due to body imperfections. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) (Griffiths, 2018), which is a distressing, handicapping and/or impairing preoccupation that the suffer perceives to be ugly, unattractive or deformed, soon became the diagnostic doctors were using to address the mental health issues that the selfie culture had created.
On average, women between 16 and 25 years old (Ehmke, 2019), spend over five hours a week taking general selfies, which then proceed to be a process of elimination as they are taking seven shots at a time. Alongside, 1000 men between 18 and 40 years old. In order to seek what is society's idea of perfection, editing images after taking them is almost a must. There are apps that anyone is able to download for more substantial changes. Facetune is a popular app, like others, allow you to erase imperfections, change the structure of your face and body to the point where you do not look like yourself. The use of filters in selfies became more common when social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram introduced various filters and lenses to alter appearances.
The offer of perfecting filters that smooth skin, thin the face and change your eye colour has resulted in a new mental illness scientists are calling "Snapchat dysmorphia". As the selfies with filters have become the norm on social media, and what is perceived to be attractive, it can trigger BDD. Dr Tijion Esho (Ritschel, 2018), a cosmetic doctor will turn away patients who seem overly-obsessed with resembling filters, previously said "We now see photos of ourselves daily via the social platforms we use, which arguably makes us more critical of ourselves. Patients using pictures of celebrities or Snapchat-filtered versions themselves as reference points is okay". One survey of plastic surgeons found that 55% in 2018, reported seeing patients who wanted to improve their appearance in selfies, in comparison to the 13% reconstructive surgeons reported seeing in 2013, including patients younger than 30.
The increase in plastic surgery, for teenagers and young adults has rapidly grown within the past 3 years, due to ridiculous trends on social media. For example, the Kylie Jenner trend on all social media platforms surfaced the internet in November 30th, 2015. Although the rumours of her lip fillers had caused speculation, there were endless amount of people causing harm to their lips trying to enlarge them at home. As a result of this, more than 27,000 lip procedures took place in America in 2016 (Miller, 2019). However, in a survey carried out for ITV News, it was found that lip filler errors were made up almost 70% of all corrective work and 47% procedures that led to complaints were carried out by beauticians (ITV News, 2019).
Women being the dominant gender that use social media and take selfies more, trends like this is another reason as to why people think their selfies are not acceptable enough for social media. The idea of having something everyone else does, allows everyone to continue to run in the viscous cycle of having the need to show the world what they have and look like. Mulvey's notion of the "male gaze" was constructed from a male point of view, arguing that females were seen as objects, which were controlled or fetishised. Changing the way you look to attract what the majority of public want is playing into the theory (Mulvey, Rose and Lewis, 1975).
Selfies can be seen as a lifestyle trend that is easy to follow up with. Introvert people can get a way of talking to people easily without pushing their boundaries. Once they receive a positive feedback from the photos they have shared, it would encourage them to do it again. This may not necessarily make them feel more confident yet will permit them to exhibit themselves. Moreover, it allows for the social media world and subsequently the world to always see you at your best. Within recent years, social media influencers have evolved significantly. Individuals who post images of themselves that are relative to public categories are consistently growing a following.
With this, brands investigate their post schedules and interaction with their followers, in order to collaborate with them as a marketing strategy. Instagram is typically used for collaborations and individuals have managed to form a career from posting images, sponsored by brands, as an influencer. From fashion bloggers to gym instructor's, 72% of major brands (Lieber, 2018) say they dedicate a sizeable portion of their marketing budgets to influencers, because of the personal relationship with their audience.
The images that are posted depend on the brand. Some brands may want the influencer to pose in the certain way or even say something specific, whereas, most of the time it is solely up to the influencer as they need to maintain and continue their following by staying consistent with their posts. Payment for users begin at a fairly low level for a couple of hundred pounds with a low following. As the following increases, for example, an account with a million followers can get paid up to ?10,000 (Mackay, 2018) for a one-off post or more. As well as this, they are extremely fortunate to receive free products with the choice to promote them or not.
The growth of influencers on social media is continuous as the pay checks is no secret to the public. Although the idea of being an influencer sounds relatively easy, it also gives the audience false hope. Most influencers are getting paid for their luxuries, including plastic surgery to make themselves look better. The trend of influencers has resulted in other users to take selfies and look exactly just like the influencers, which encourages users to spend hours on social media, eventually resulting to numerous mental health issues.
Attention seeking is the defining need of our times. Selfie culture performs a big part of individuals having the need of constantly looking for social acceptance. Selfies are taken every single day all over the world, 59% of woman and 41% men (Kessel, 2017). I believe we all capture images as an attention seeking mechanism to illustrate our appearance, what we are doing and what we own. Selfie culture is only going to increase as time goes.
Attention Seeking is the defining need of our times. (2019, Dec 06). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/attentionseeking-is-the-defining-need-of-our-times-selfie-culture-example-essay
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