The SELFIE Craze...

(part 1) :D

As what we are all aware of, nowadays taking selfies have gotten into a totally different level. I read through some articles about this selfie craze and I found out that, wow selfie is a part of narcissistic behavior. Last semester I was taking my adolescent psychology class and as a part of the assignments, my lecturer assigned us with the task to find out about how does selfie leads to narcissism. So here we go. I would like to share something that I found out.

Ok..before that let me explain what is actually meant by narcissism. Narcissism is a term used to describe the excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. Whereas narcissistic refers to a person having or showing an excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. Basically, narcissism is considered as the basic level or the less extreme level of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is said to be a pattern of self centered and egoistical behavior that shows up in many different situation and activities through one's thinking and behavior. A person diagnosed with this disorder is said to be extremely self-centered, lacks empathy on others, shows up arrogant behaviors and needs constant attention and admiration from others. However, this does not mean that whoever that shows up with this characteristics are suffering from this disorder. There are some scales to determine whether the person is really suffering from this disorder or they have the risks to end up with this disorder sooner or later. These are totally in the hands of experts on how to diagnose the patients and to confirm the possibilities of them suffering from this disorder.  For more details on this Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you can refer to these links :

1) http://www.asch.net/portals/0/journallibrary/articles/ajch-45/mcneal.pdf

2)http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis-rs/Research%20On%20Narcissistic%20Personality%20Disorder.pdf

 Ok..now back to the part where selfie leads to narcissism. So you might be wondering how on earth is taking selfies can make you a narcissist. Actually that was the same question I was wondering about. I never thought it was a behavior that could actually lead up to problems like that. But after reading some articles, I found out that it actually make sense. Taking selfies constantly makes you to be too obsessed with yourself. Each time you take a selfie, you aim for perfection. You always want to make sure you look perfect in the picture. As perfect as you could be so that not even one extreme perfectionist can actually find even a tiny imperfection in you. These in turn causes you to take tons and tons of selfies until you actually acquire "The Perfect One" that you are satisfied with. These is said to be the foundation for narcissistic behavior. Later these turns into an addiction where individuals tend to take selfies frequently and constantly upload them in social medias such as Facebook and Instagram. This in fact turns into an attention seeking behavior. Constant uploads of selfies in social medias make them feel glued to social networking sites. They always want to know what people think of them. They always wants to get as many 'likes' as possible and good comments for the selfies they upload. These in turn makes them to be more self obsessed and self centered. Besides that, constant selfie uploads in social media is also said to be linked with self esteem. It have the capability to affect your self esteem. Viewed in a good light, receiving good comments about your appearance can actually boost your self esteem and self confidence. You tend to gain confidence in the way you carry yourself. However, there is the negative side of it as well. Once you receive a negative comment or any type of comment that you don't actually expect to hear from others about your looks, you tend to get angry or unsatisfied. If such thing tend to continue for a long period of time, you might lose your self esteem gradually. I was shocked when I found out that a British teenage guy actually almost went to the extent of committing suicide, just for the sake of getting a perfect shot for a selfie!!! Here are some of the links that can update you on the selfie news :

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

http://dailyhealthpost.com/selfie-addiction-linked-to-narcissism-low-self-esteem-mental-illness/


That's all for now from me..  will talk more on this in my second part!!! Till then see yah... :P