Do Selfies Lead to Narcissism, Addiction, and Mental Disorders?

Woman taking selfie

The term selfie has become a revolution. The word has even been added to the dictionary! Oxford dictionary defines selfie as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.” if you look around you will most likely find a person taking a selfie. Whether people admit to it or not, we have all taken a selfie at one point! Many people want to take the perfect selfie to post on social media in hopes of getting a ton of likes. Is this really what the world has come to? The amount of likes someone gets is something that people actually worry about in their daily lives. Selfies have seemed to be leading to narcissism, addiction, and mental illness.

Dr David Veal is a psychiatrist. He says, “Two out of three of all the patients who come to see me with Body Dysmorphic Disorder since the rise of camera phones have a compulsion to repeatedly take and post selfies on social media sites” (Scientists Link Selfies). This is an extremely large issue especially in young girls. The pressure to be beautiful and fit society’s version of “perfect” has a huge detrimental impact on people everywhere. Many people think that taking selfies is a joke, but others become completely obsessed with taking the perfect selfie. This means they are constantly looking at themselves and judging themselves based solely on their looks. It seems obvious that this could lead to narcissism, or obsession with themselves.

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Can taking selfies cause people to commit suicide? This was almost the case for Danny Bowman, a British male teenager. He spent became so obsessed with taking seflies that he dropped out of school, and for six months he spent 10 hours a day taking over 200 selfies to try to find the perfect one (Scientists Link Selfies). He tried to commit suicide because he could not take the perfect selfie. Danny has body dysmorphic disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. Danny told The Mirror “I was constantly in search of taking the perfect selfie and when I realized I couldn’t, I wanted to die. I lost my friends, my education, my health and almost my life” (Scientists Link Selfies).

Now Danny is definitely an extreme and anecdotal case, but the fact that there has even been one case is extremely scary. Selfies can caused narcissism in people,  but we cannot rule out reverse causation because narcissism could lead to people becoming obsessed with selfies. Selfies and addiction are correlated because addictive personalities can become obsessed with taking selfies. We are unsure whether selfies can cause mental disorders, but it is a possibility. It could lead to body dysmorphic disorder or OCD, or they could have no connection at all. All of these correlations or causations could be due to chance. Although, they seem very likely.

This study was observational, but the way to make it experimental would be to have a large group of people become completely obsessed with taking selfies like Danny Bowman was. Then, see how their personality changes after becoming obsessed. This is obviously unethical so for now we have to rely on the little evidence that we have. Although I am guilty of having taken selfies before, I will think twice when I see people taking multiple selfies.

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Sources:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/selfie

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/selfie-addiction-mental-illness_n_5022090.html

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/04/07/scientists-link-selfies-to-narcissism-addiction-mental-illness/

7 thoughts on “Do Selfies Lead to Narcissism, Addiction, and Mental Disorders?

  1. Rebecca Sorensen

    This post is extremely relevant to today’s society and our age group, and several people came to mind while reading this post. Selfies are definitely fun to take with your friends and aren’t too bad, because we are all guilty of the occasional selfie. However, I can think of so many examples of (mostly) girls who post almost nothing but selfies, and several a day or week. Or several from the same event at different angles. When I see these names pop up and the associated selfie, I always think they must be the most conceited, narcissistic people in the world, and it definitely becomes irritating after a while. I know so many girls, even close friends, who get disappointed when they do not have enough likes or favorites and wind up deleting their post. I’m guilty of being nervous about likes too, but never to such an extreme point and I definitely think that numbers and likes and favorites are having a negative effect on people. People who already feel insecure can be completely devastated if their selfie does not get as many likes as someone else’s or does not reach their personal quota. I agree that reverse causation can exist in this problem, but it definitely seems likely that selfies are causing more personal issues than they are worth. This article (http://www.teenvogue.com/advice/2013-08/selfie-obsession) also explains some of the negativity associated with selfies and the impact on self esteem.

  2. Eva Luz Bonta

    I agree, this post is very relevant for todays youth, especially for high schoolers. This article refers to a study showing that taking too many selfies can affect your relationships. The study found that people couldn’t relate well to people that constantly posted selfies. It’s a narcissism that is becoming acceptable with a “if celebrities are doing it, why can’t I?” mentality. However, celebrities aren’t necessarily the right people to take social media queues from, considering a lot of popular celebrities are narcissistic themselves. I’m not blaming them, I think it would be hard not to be narcissistic considering the constant praise and scrutiny. Teenagers look up to some of these celebrities, celebrities taking “perfect selfies”, and try to mimic them. In turn, some of these teens may be looked down upon. I say this based on what I’ve noticed go on in high school.

  3. Katherine Sharon Trimble

    Wow! This blog post was extremely interesting. While some may view taking selfies as a bad thing, Elizabeth Alvarado, a contributor for The Daily of the University of Washington, states that selfies give people “the power” to present yourself to others the way you want. She continues to say that selfies are not as bad as people say they are, for there is nothing wrong “with having a high opinion of yourself every once in a while” (Alvarado, The Daily of the University of Washington).

  4. Larissa Marie Wright

    This post is very relevant for todays youth and society. This along with social media sites like Facebook are becoming more and more controversial for the affects they have on people. Millions of people have social media and plenty of them are fine and enjoying theses sites and posts like selfies. Yet there are extreme cases such as Danny. These cases make one think if not selfies, would his disorder find another outlet for obsession? Is it really the impact of the selfies or what that his disorder picking a focal point?

  5. Abigail Charlotte Ventosa

    I loved this post considering it’s something that’s becoming more and more relevant. It’s sad that people’s self esteem is now being determined by how many “likes” or “favorites” they got on a post or a picture. I know personally the people who are on my feed taking the most selfies are the ones I would definitely categorize as the “narcissistic” ones in my friend groups.

  6. Byanca Melissa Rodriguez Villanueva

    I really liked this post, and it is sad to sad that the world has come to the point that is an important self-eestem factor to take the perfect selfie uploaded to the social media and have millions of likes. I would like to see more studies related to this topic because of the role that selfies has taken on people`s life. Another question that I am wondering is how many selfies would you need to take to be on the narcisism level? making it an standard; I feel it would be interesting to discover that.

  7. Abigail Kennedy

    Kathryn, I found this blog interesting because it touches on a topic that is so pertinent to our generation. I was disappointed that there weren’t any studies about selfies. There are a few studies however on social media addictions, which I think are closely tied to “selfie” addictions. Selfies became so prominent when there were forums to share them: social media. Here are a few links to studies on social media addiction: Facebook Addiction: New Scale…, DEVELOPMENT OF A FACEBOOK ADDICTION SCALE. I think if there were to be any studies on selfies, studying how much time young adults spend on selfies, how important they gauge their selfies to be, etc., the study should also contain a social media component. Perhaps there could be survey questions that deal with social media, or researchers could measure the levels of hormones when teens see different amounts of “likes” or comments on a selfie. All of these potential addictions have huge implications not only on mental health and mortality like you mentioned, but also on social functioning. This article, Dark undercurrents of teenage girls’ selfies, talks about how social media and selfies have changed the way teens approach friendships as well as romantic relationships. What do you think of the link between selfies and social media, and how they affect sociability?

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