home » What to wear » What can self-dependency lead to? Selfie mania: why the whole world is obsessed with photographs Selfie disease: scientific research

What can self-dependency lead to? Selfie mania: why the whole world is obsessed with photographs Selfie disease: scientific research

Recently, social networks are full of so-called selfies - photos of themselves. It would seem that what could be wrong with self-portrait pictures? Yes, of course, there is nothing special and reprehensible here. But if this hobby does not develop into a selfie, the addiction you need.

Many in our country do not see anything terrible and dangerous in this hobby. Some people don't even know the name of the illness caused by selfie addiction. And also what does it threaten and how dangerous is it? But exactly until the tragic events that happened to young people who want to take amazing shots, which became their last pictures, are not voiced in the news.

Selfie mania: a disease that has a name!

It is worth noting that in America, psychologists have recognized selfie addiction as a mental illness. To be precise, the diagnosis sounds like this: obsessive-compulsive mania. But in fact, selfies are a disease of the 21st century that has captured the whole world and affected different age categories. People who are constantly looking for bright moments that can be captured on the camera of their gadget are gradually going crazy. They, in pursuit of unique frames, expose their own, not fully realizing the full degree of danger, because the brain at this moment selects the background and an interesting opportunity to capture a unique selfie. But such a passion for hobby can cost a life.

Characteristics of the disease

And since this hobby is recognized as a disease, scientific studies were carried out, as a result of which three stages of "selfism" were identified. Description of the disease, depending on the severity:

The initial stage - a person takes several pictures every day and uploads their network.
When people start to think about In addition, their number exceeds 5-7 photos per day - this symptom indicates that the acute stage of the disease has begun.
The chronic stage of the disease - those suffering from this degree of addiction cannot get rid of the desire to take a few shots in order to post pictures on social networks.

The most dangerous manifestation of the disease

The danger lies not only in increasing the degree of narcissism and self-love. And it's not even that a person runs for hours with a stick for the sake of successful pictures, and then puts them on the Internet for days. In an effort to surpass himself and his like-minded people, the “selfist” often risks his health and even life. Today there are many examples of how extreme selfies ended tragically. You can hear about this weekly in the news and read notes on the Internet.

And it all starts with ordinary photos posted on social networks. Many, even for fun, begin to take unusual pictures: someone will climb onto the roof of their multi-storey building to show a wonderful view, others in search of something else. But this could have ended if it were not for the numerous likes that are put for viewing an interesting selfie. This is where a kind of competition begins: “Who will take the most amazing shots?” In pursuit of such selfies, many people do the most reckless things: they climb bridge supports, put boxes of firecrackers on their heads, and climb the roofs of high-rise buildings. But unfortunately, most of these actions end tragically.

Already in many cities, explanatory work is being carried out with extreme people on how to take photos and survive at the same time. Moreover, the Safe Selfie project is being launched in Russia.

The development of technology and the emergence of social networks have provided us with an obvious way to increase self-esteem: just take a photo of yourself, put it on public display and collect the treasured "hearts" - likes. In our handbags or pockets, there is always a smartphone or tablet that can be taken out at any time to take a good shot.

However, in some cases, seemingly harmless fun turns into an obsession. The desire to take an original photo leads a person to potentially dangerous places, and also motivates them to take risky actions.

So the fashionable hobby got a medical name - selfie addiction, which American psychologists recognized as one of the types of mental disorder, but in Russia this manifestation is referred to as addictive behavior.

How to recognize selfie addiction, and what measures to take to cure this fashionable disease, you will learn in our article.

Selfie - fashionable self-portrait

First, let's look at the essence of the phenomenon. Selfies, also referred to on social media as “selfies” or “crossbows,” became a trend in 2013 and are still very popular with social media users to this day.

Mobile device manufacturers began to equip new models with a front camera so that everyone could take a self-portrait at any convenient moment. In addition, mirrors are used for selfies, and now special monopods, which allow you to increase the viewing angle of the camera, by fixing the smartphone on a long handle.

Some types of selfies have also acquired a separate name:

photo with a loved one - selfie;
photo of legs in different shoes on a beautiful background - shufiz;
if in the photo the lips are folded in a tube and stretched forward, it is called duckface;
frame-reflection in the mirror of the elevator - liftoluk;
photo of your own buttocks - Belfi;
extreme selfie - photos taken while doing extreme sports or under dangerous circumstances.

Why is there an obsessive desire to take a selfie?

Why do you want to take selfies?

Let's try to understand the causes of this strange fashion. What drives young people to take lots of photos of themselves and fill their social media accounts with them?

First of all, "self-photography" was carried away by teenagers. There is a simple explanation for this: in adolescence, the formation of the social self takes place. The question is put forward in the first place in importance: “How do others see me (especially peers and friends)?”.

Teenagers doubt their own attractiveness, their self-esteem is unstable, which is why they constantly want to know the opinions of society. A simple and always affordable way to get feedback from the environment is to take a selfie and post it on your page on a social network.

However, the virtual community very often gives an inadequate reaction in the form of insults, negative comments or indifference. Many automatically like all the photos in the feed. Thus, teenagers find themselves disoriented and look in vain for ways to get a positive reaction all the time, increasingly falling under the influence of the opinions of social network users.

If an adult is captured by selfie mania, this may indicate low self-esteem, infantilism, and a similar desire to gain the approval of society.

Signs of selfie addiction

The presence of a large number of selfies in the account in itself does not indicate illness. Research shows that selfie addiction can be identified by the following signs:

taking at least three pictures of yourself a day;
permanent posting of these photos on social networks;
tracking the number of likes and comments.

Another characteristic is also spending a lot of time on taking selfies and giving it too much importance.

Distinguish between the initial, acute and chronic stages of the development of the disease. At the first stage, a person begins to take selfies more often and stores them on his phone, while in the acute stage, he or she constantly posts his or her self-portraits on social networks and monitors the reaction of society. At the chronic stage, the creation of "selfies" becomes an obsession, and the inability to take a picture of oneself or post a photo is very painful, can cause mood swings and poor health.

What causes selfie mania?

Why is the selfie hobby dangerous?

The obvious consequences of selfie addiction are unstable self-esteem and a tendency to narcissism, as well as wasted time spent creating and posting photos.

In addition, selfie mania can push you to take risky actions. In pursuit of a good shot, teenagers and adults forget about reality and do not think about the possible consequences.

Infatuated with self-photography, a person may overlook warning signs or climb to heights where any awkward movement is a potential risk of injury. So, many get broken arms and legs.

Sometimes the desire to get a unique shot can even be fatal. In America, this happened to a 22-year-old guy named Meng who wanted to take a photo with a box of fireworks on his head.

In Russia, accidents have also begun to occur against the backdrop of selfie addiction.

How to cure selfie addiction?

How to get rid of selfie addiction

If you have found in yourself or your friend all the signs of the described disease, we recommend that you immediately contact a psychologist. A qualified specialist will help you understand the causes of its occurrence and give recommendations that will allow you to change your attitude to selfies and forget about obsessive thoughts. In especially severe cases, drug therapy may be prescribed.

However, if you wish, you can try to overcome the developing addiction on your own. To this end, psychologists recommend taking the following actions.

Get a notebook and pen or take notes on your smartphone in which to write down your feelings and thoughts, especially in those moments when the desire arises to take a selfie.
Get in the habit of planning your time - making a schedule for the day and a plan of affairs. It is important to limit the possibility of photographing by setting a time limit and a fixed number of frames.
As an alternative to virtual communication, you should try to find hobbies and like-minded people in real life. It can be dancing, creative or sports activities, meetings with friends, classmates, and so on.

If your real life is rich and interesting enough, there will be no place for selfie addiction. The main thing is to actively spend your time so that you simply have no time to pick up a smartphone.

We don't like them, but we do them anyway. We look askance at those who do this, but sometimes we ourselves become like them. Admit it, we all take selfies. And about why we do this - in our article.

How it all began

Since ancient times, when there were no smartphones with a front camera yet, people looked at themselves in all reflective surfaces - water, dishes, mirrors, and so on. And they did it not only in order to monitor their appearance. Later, too enthusiastic looking at one's own image began to be condemned as narcissism, but people, no, no, yes, showed their tongues to their reflections against the public will.

Keeping pace with progress, humanity learned to take self-portraits first on canvas, then on antediluvian cameras with magnesium flashes, then on the “soap dishes” we are used to, and later managed to make self-portraits even with the help of heavy digital cameras. But all this was not given much importance, until people had at their disposal the most convenient and perfect device for "self-saws" - mobile phones.

Front cameras, which appeared in phones for video calls, quickly got another use - selfies. And this phenomenon, like an infection, like a snowball, spread, grew and captured more and more new horizons, until we got to the point that at the Oscars ceremony in 2014, the host of the show, Ellen DeGeneres, invited some guests to take a group photo on her sponsored smartphone.

After this picture, everyone seemed to have completely lost their minds. Even the most ardent opponents of "self-photography" were forced to admit that the selfie has firmly entered our lives and has become almost normal. But is it really that bad?

Modern insanity or global psychotherapy

Now people around the world have hundreds of phone models at their disposal that can take not just a picture with a mediocre front camera, but a quite efficient self-portrait, focused and illuminated with a flash, if necessary.

Smartphone app stores such as App Store with its recent thematic selection, there are endless varieties of programs. Some of them are able to improve even the most unsuccessful shots, others can add the desired effects. All these applications are aimed at making beautiful selfie to collect likes. After all, it is for the sake of this that we are taking all these photographs.

It is vital for a person, as a kind of social animal, to be recognized, seen and noticed. And the "self-saws" are made specifically to share them with friends and everyone who is interested in them. And as soon as the author of a selfie receives likes for his picture, recognition and admiration trigger a psychological mechanism due to which we begin to do what the encouragement brought us, more and more. Such psychotherapy makes people more productive in many ways, not just in the ability to take self-portraits. So it’s safe to say that selfies are practically psychological tool, motivating people not only to look better, but also to be better. Suddenly? Further more.

Dr. Selfie or how I stopped being afraid and fell in love with the front camera

Absolutely all categories of citizens are subject to the phenomenon of narcissism. All boys and girls, young and old, make at least a couple of their own portraits almost every day, and from now on it is absolutely normal and even useful.

For example, selfie has taken root in the field of socially vulnerable people - teenagers and pensioners. For the first selfies, they became an integral part of life and communication, because it is not for nothing that the young audience supplies the Internet with the largest share of all self-saws. As for the second, I suggest you remember about grandmothers and grandfathers, who lead an active life in their 60+ on both sides of the screen. With the help of selfies in their optimistic instagrams, they not only remind their offspring of themselves, but also bask in the rays of their own significance and usefulness, while collecting likes.

Well, the last positive effect of a selfie is the opportunity for each of us to perceive ourselves as both a subject and an object of creativity at the same time. According to psychologists, photographing yourself alone with yourself allows you to practically be both a director and an actor on your personal set. This is an opportunity to show oneself not only as the owner of a certain set of qualities and things, but also as a feeling subject, the ability to simultaneously perceive and be perceived - yourself.

Such a two-sided perception helps society as a whole and each individual in particular to learn to more fully perceive not only their own emotions, but also the emotional state of other “selfie lovers”. So, selfies actually help us understand each other better, no matter how unexpected such a conclusion may seem.

The most affordable medicine

So it's time to confess to yourself, ladies and gentlemen. We need selfies. As a preventive procedure, for example, medication in some way. Or at least in order not to dissolve in a huge stream of media that has flooded the entire human Internet. Thanks to our self-portraits, we constantly remind everyone who is interested in us. We indulge our own vanity and vanity, counting the “hearts” and comments that have flocked to our selfies. Together with self-portraits, we create ourselves, who we want to see and who we strive to become. We are chasing fame in order to feel needed and significant in the virtual world, if this feeling is not enough in real life.

With the advent of Instagram and front-facing cameras, the world has literally been overwhelmed by a wave of people enthusiastically photographing their faces at various moments in their lives. You can’t call it artistic photography, because the so-called “selfies” most often do not carry any semantic load. In recent years, this phenomenon has become so alarming that researchers have become interested in it, who now believe that the passion for selfies can be a real mental illness. Yes, yes, if you cannot live a day without two or three photos of yourself, you may have a problem. For its more accurate diagnosis, a special test has even been developed that will help you understand whether you are pampering the people with your beautiful face, or it’s just time to glue the front camera.

official opinion

According to the American Psychiatric Association, which in 2014 gathered a whole council on selfie mania, the manic desire to photograph oneself may well be considered an obsessive-compulsive desire to assert oneself. People with this disorder use selfies as a way to get likes and thus increase their self-esteem or worth. However, if you are not Quasimodo, but a beautiful young woman, then a bunch of selfies on the social network are most often justified by a simple female desire to enjoy your youth and beauty, along the way causing the envy of less gifted girls. If the appearance does not reach the definition of “pretty”, but the number of selfies goes off scale, something is clearly wrong here. You may even be an exhibitionist. But not a fact.

So, gentlemen, scientists believe that self-mania is divided into borderline, acute and chronic stages. Borderline involves about three selfies daily (sometimes even without being published on social networks, which is even more alarming). Acute assumes about the same number of photos, but they are published wherever possible. Chronic - at this stage, you take selfies throughout the day, without releasing your smartphone from shaking hands and rubbing red eyes with foam at the mouth in a photo editor. Well, your Instagram at the same time is like a portrait gallery on the topic: "I'm in bed", "I'm in the store", "I'm in the toilet", "Me, me again, and me" and so on.

Why do mere mortals need selfies?

If the numerous selfies of the legion of Instagram beauties in various cool locations can still be explained by vanity and the desire to capture the beautiful moments of their lives, then why are there so many selfies of ordinary people taking pictures against the backdrop of a carpet or a cat? Scientists argue that the main driving force in this case are factors such as the desire to be socially competitive, drawing attention to one's modest person, increasing self-esteem through likes, and the desire to fit in with the society shining in social networks with luxury life. Many people use selfies as a tool for self-expression, forgetting that self-expression is more than just a photo of a complex facial expression with banal quotes under it.

In addition, let's not forget that today there are a huge number of applications that allow you to remove skin defects from photos, apply makeup, change the proportions of the face and body, and apply a beautiful filter. With their help, you can transform even a very ugly person as much as possible, therefore, the selfie will receive more likes, therefore, self-esteem will be stroked again. Is this good or bad? Yes, there is nothing wrong with that, the main thing is not to fill up your account with mountains of the same type of selfies with a poker face. And, of course, not to write hackneyed philosophical thoughts under them, which in people with a safe intellect do not cause anything but a facepalm.

Test

To determine the degree of your selfie addiction, answer yes or no to the following questions. If more "yes" prevail - think about it, a psychologist is expensive, and you are still so young.

Do you photograph yourself much more often than a cat or the world around you?

Do you edit every photo in the app with the meticulousness of a Vogue retoucher?

Before each selfie, do you do a full make-up and dress beautifully?

Do you take 20-30 selfies before you get a photo you like?

Are you writhing like a man possessed when you can't post a selfie on social media right now?

Do you look different in your selfies than you do in real life?

After posting a selfie that gets a lot of likes, does your self-confidence increase, but not for long?

Does your stress level drop after posting a selfie on social media?

Given a photo of beautifully decorated food and a photo of yourself. Will you choose the first or the second?

Do you like many other people's selfies to get likes in return?

Do you send selfies to your friends and acquaintances to get any kind of feedback (preferably positive)?

If your selfie gets few likes, do you get depressed?

findings

If you find yourself in an unhealthy passion for selfies, do not worry, this is not fatal and is certainly fixable. Of course, you don’t need to delete your social media accounts, just grit your teeth, pull yourself together and switch to your reflection in the mirror. But be warned: mirrors are tricky too – you can get addicted to the mirror you look in every five minutes, wondering if you’re good with makeup or hair. In any case, none of these addictions are critical and will not lead you into the gentle embrace of orderlies, but remember that there are cases when people could not go even 10 minutes without a selfie, they were so sucked into this dangerous quagmire.

“Let’s take a selfie?”, “Will you make yourself?”, “Get a stick, we’ll take a picture!” is heard from all sides. Selfie mania has taken over the world. Today I will talk about how photographing yourself affects our lives.

Selfies (English selfie, from “self” - oneself, oneself) are photographs that are taken most often on the front camera of a mobile phone. You can also take a selfie with a camera and a mirror and a selfie stick. By the way, the first such self-portraits were recorded back in 1900.

The first peak in the popularity of this kind of photographs was presented by the popular MySpace resource - in the 2000s, self-made pictures appeared quite often. The second wave of selfie popularity, which continues to this day, was reintroduced by the famous Instagram, where it is important to photograph EVERYTHING you see, eat or feel. The phenomenon of popularity of this kind of photography is clear to me: it is fast, simple, and the result is immediately visible. You don't have to ask anyone to take your picture. Now you yourself can see how you turn out and, in which case, quickly change the position, reshoot.

Celebrities are also pouring fuel into the fire of the flaming cult of "selfies". A picture of Dmitry Medvedev in an elevator on an iPhone has become a popular meme, giving rise to a great many parodies, the so-called “phototoads”.

Other celebrities also do not hesitate to take a picture of themselves on the front camera and post the results online. Moreover, social orientation is absolutely not important here! In general, in our age of technology, it is difficult to imagine a person who at least once did not do “himself” - even Pope Francis did not escape this.

Our smaller brothers do not lag behind fashion: dogs, cats, kangaroos, monkeys. Such photos of animals like selfies just blew up the Internet. Of course, animals can’t press the shutter button, so to take such a photo, it’s enough to click, for example, a cat when he stretches his paw towards the smartphone.

A new fashion vision for interesting selfies: the selfie statue. The pranksters at the ancient Greek museum decided to get creative with classical art and took a photo of the statues like a selfie:

Photos with statues have spread all over the Internet, and the new mainstream has rushed to the masses. Museum employees are not very happy with such an increase in those wishing to photograph ancient and not very sculptures. For example, in May of this year, selfie lovers in Italy broke the statue of Hercules.

Amid the new height of fashion, a monument to an Ottoman prince has been erected in Turkey: in the city of Amasya, crowds of tourists queue up to be photographed with the prince, who is photographing himself. The smartphone in the hand of the statue was broken by some vandals (it is possible that these are the same people who ruined the monument to Hercules in Italy), but this does not bother tourists at all.

Are selfies harmful? Real and Esoteric Answers

One can talk endlessly about the dangers of "selfies", however, as well as about their usefulness. People are ready to do anything to make a beautiful shot, because of which they periodically receive injuries of varying degrees of complexity, and some even lose their lives.

Ramon Gonzalez, the famous rapper, decided to take a selfie while driving his motorcycle. As a result, a departure into the oncoming lane and a collision with a car. Another case: the girl Silvia from Spain wanted to be photographed on the bridge. She climbed onto the ledge, holding on to it with one hand (the other, of course, was a smartphone). As a result, the girl's leg slipped, and she fell down onto a concrete support.

As you can see, selfies cause problems for people when they are focused on something that is not right. This happens for the following reasons: when we do something, for example, drive a car, our energy flows are tuned to a certain rhythm. Concentration may not be maximum, and in this case the setting saves us. But when we take a photo, the energy flows behave differently. We come out of a state of concentration, we try to relax and smile. And here is the situation: just now you were focused on one thing and then you are trying to relax, being distracted by a completely different thing (a photograph). This is unsafe and can lead to sad consequences. This is especially true for those people who do not know how to quickly switch energy flows, get out of depression for a long time and slowly give up habits.

In 2014, Roskomnadzor warned about the dangers of selfies. Allegedly, due to head contact, during a general photo, pediculosis and other diseases can be transmitted.

From an esoteric point of view, selfies do not harm our energy in any way if they are taken in the right place. But a photograph with your face against the background of something unpleasant will capture the information of that time forever. For example, a photo in an anomalous zone, even after a lapse of time, can influence your usual course of life with its energy. And this applies not only to personal photos.

As much as you want to look original amidst the worldwide selfie craze, remember that safety is paramount. The photograph itself does not cause harm - circumstances and inattention bring harm. Take pictures of friends, loved ones, pets as much as you want. After all, the more positive in shooting, the better! Take only safe selfies!

Finally, I will share my own selfie:

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