TMCnet News

The impulse to post SELFIES [The Brunswick News, Ga. :: ]
[July 30, 2014]

The impulse to post SELFIES [The Brunswick News, Ga. :: ]


(Brunswick News (GA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) July 30--The global phenomenon of the selfie has become so commonplace that it has infiltrated the social media sites of commoners, celebrities, and even politicians, simultaneously with ease.



It is now a term synonymous of the digital age and everyone is getting into it. In fact, the third most frequently used hashtag on Instagram is #me, under which more than 90 million self-portraits are currently posted. The term has gotten so popular that the Oxford Dictionary named it the International Word of the Year 2013, and it was recently added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in May -- selfie is defined as "an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks." It's also the subject of many research studies. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 55 percent of those ages 18 to 33 have posted a selfie on a social media site, something no other generation is nearly as inclined to do. Overall, 26 percent of Americans have shared a selfie on a photo-sharing or social networking site.

However, selfies are certainly not new. Daguerrotype pioneer Robert Cornelius took the first photographic picture of himself outside his family's store in Philadelphia in 1839. The selfie took on a life of its own with the dawn of digital cameras, first gaining popularity in early 2004 through the help of the photo-sharing website Flickr. It continues to flourish through the introduction of front-facing cameras on smartphones.


While many have jumped on the selfie bandwagon to rival the hundreds of pouty-lipped, cleavage-bearing photos of such celebrities as reality TV star Kim Kardashian -- or the collage of shirtless pictures on teen heartthrob Justin Bieber's Twitter account for the guys -- it's the purpose of the photo and why people have become so obsessed with themselves that many local counselors are struggling to understand.

In a world where everything can be digitally uploaded instantaneously, Dr. Ashley Callicutt, licensed counselor and owner of Coastal Counseling Associates on Sea Island Road on St. Simons Island, believes the power of the selfie is scratching away at society's beauty standards and expectations, revealing both the positive and damaging effects of posting one's life online.

"What I tend to deal with are the repercussions of the ill-placed selfie and the unintentional consequences of Snapchatting something. Some people post selfies because they are attention seekers needing to fulfill some kind of need. Those are the ones you'll see that are scantily clothed or doing things that make you say, 'Wow! Yeah, that's not okay,'" Callicutt said. "Others do it to make people jealous, to show off, or to document their lives. Everyone's purpose is different.

"Selfies absolutely can be positive, it just depends on your purpose. Yes, some people are just self-centered, but there are some that use the photos to track their progress or to hold themselves accountable. I think it can be a great historical account of achievement." Rosemary Hayward, a licensed professional counselor at Stillpoint Counseling Center, 228 Redfern Village, St. Simons Island, sees the selfie culture as anything but positive. She views the self-portrait craze as "a bid for attention." "There are selfies and then there are 'selfies.' If they are used for sexting, there's absolutely nothing positive about that. It just speaks of a very bad problem with sexual addictiveness and shows that you have no self-respect, self-esteem, or sense of privacy," Hayward said. "But if you are taking photos just to take them and aren't doing anything with them, what's the point of doing it? If you are taking photos of a new hairstyle and you want to get it done like that again, then there's nothing wrong with that. It just depends upon why you are taking it and who you're sending them to." Some of the damaging side-effects that Hayward and Callicutt have both seen are instances where the transparency of the online world was used to gain information on the user in the real world.

"There are incredible repercussions to whatever you do on social media ... (and) there can be danger in them because you don't know who is going to get a hold of it. And when you post things like, 'Going away for the weekend' with it, it's like an open invitation to be vandalized or burglarized," Hayward said.

Callicutt agrees, adding that a harmless selfie to the user could be misconstrued as distasteful and unprofessional to a potential employer.

"People believe they have a great amount of anonymity online that they don't have and they go beyond their comfortable boundaries because they think that they have so much protection through social media, and I see that blow up in kids' and adults' faces all the time," Callicutt said.

"One thing that people fail to realize is that most employers search all of their media sites, depending upon their privacy settings A lot of college kids don't understand that posting photos of them doing keg stands, hanging out at frat parties or putting pictures of themselves going out with different girls every night shows that they don't have a sense of stability.

"The internet shouldn't offer you that sense of security. Think of it this way: If you wouldn't do it in daylight in front of your friends and family, then you shouldn't be doing it on any mobile device that can be beamed away to someone else." While there seems to be a consensus of opinion that selfies are more about self-obsession than self-love, there's some self-awareness of the downside to the selfie culture, according to the Pew Research Center survey.

Nine out of 10 millennials say people generally share too much information about themselves online, a view held by similarly lopsided proportions of all older generations.

-- Reporter Brittany Tate writes about lifestyle topics. Contact her at [email protected], on Facebook or at 265-8320, ext. 317.

___ (c)2014 The Brunswick News (Brunswick, Ga.) Visit The Brunswick News (Brunswick, Ga.) at www.thebrunswicknews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]