Selfies The self-obsession?

Ajay Sudan
Selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or camera phone held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick.
Selfies are often shared on social networking services such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They are usually flattering and made to appear casual. Most selfies are taken with a camera held at arm’s length or pointed at a mirror, rather than by using a self-timer. A selfie stick may be used to widen the angle of view, such as for group selfies.
It is a monopod used to take selfie photographs by positioning a smartphone or camera beyond the normal range of the arm.  Selfie is one of the current trends among the new generation. But, everything has some disadvantages.
Selfie lead to mental sickness, taking selfies during work or during a sad occasion is the indicator of mental sickness. Some people take too many selfies. This is another indicator of the same. Make sure, selfies are not harming you and anyone else. Otherwise, you should stop taking selfies. Transfer of lice is one of the most alarming disadvantages of taking selfies. When two or more people pose for taking selfie, lice from one’s hair is transferred to another’s hair. This is happening at an alarming rate in the world. So, make sure that the people who are with you in the selfie don’t have lice in his/her hair. The size of one’s face changes a little while taking selfies. This is due to the fact that the selfies are taken from a near distance. So, the face may appear much larger than the actual size in the selfie. It gives partial capturing, if you want to take a whole-body photograph, you can’t do it by selfie. Selfies are only applicable for capturing the upper portion of your body. If you want to take a whole-body selfie, you might need a stand! Large groups are difficult to capture in a selfie. The rest of the people will appear much smaller than the selfie owner. Some of them may go outside the frame.
Some selfies are a bit too revealing, Ladies please have some respect for yourself and your bodies! Posting half naked pics are not the way to rack up your likes. The only thing you’re racking up is negative attention! Just remember there is a fine line between posting a selfie in your bathing suit versus your bloomers. There are a million ways to be beautiful, but there is one way that doesn’t require any effort at all. Be yourself! Don’t stoop so low for the approval of others, let people like you for you.
If you’ve taken up to three selfies today, consider yourself nuts. At least, in the eyes of the American Psychiatric Association and countless others, who are igniting a global movement to recognize that an addiction to selfies can be indicative of a mental disorder?
We all know that certain someone who is intent on capturing every waking moment with a duck-faced selfie. They even have that one specific expression set aside, ready to plaster it on in a whim the very second an iPhone is pulled out.
It never seems concerning until you look through a compiled, endless list of someone’s Instagram selfies – and even then, it could be more funny than worrisome. Now I’m not one to typically draw concern towards trivial matters, especially something that sounds as ridiculous as an addiction to self-portraits.
The story of Danny Bowman, a 19-year-old British teen will surely stumble you, who exemplifies the worst case scenario of a selfie addiction – living proof that a new vice may currently be emerging. How far did he take his obsession? Snapping over 200 photos a day, he didn’t leave his house for six months, during which time he lost 30 pounds and dropped out of school.
Growing increasingly frustrated with his inability to capture the perfect selfie, he eventually tried to commit suicide. Fortunately, much like his attempts for a picture perfect image, he failed in doing so.
Recently, the American Psychiatric Association actually confirmed that taking selfies is a mental disorder, going as far as to term the condition “selfitis”. The APA has defined it as: “the obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of one’s self and post them on social media as a way to make up for the lack of self-esteem and to fill a gap in intimacy”, and has categorized it into three levels: borderline, acute, and chronic.
How extreme is your selfitis? If you find yourself taking up to three selfies a day but not posting them on social media, consider yourself borderline. If you’re posting at least three images of yourself a day, that’s acute. Lastly, if you’re experiencing an uncontrollable urge to take and post up to six photos a day, congratulations – you have chronic selfitis.
Danny fit quite comfortably into the third category, perhaps even deserving his own echelon of selfie insanity. What can we learn from Danny? Well for starters, we live in a society that is provoked into an infinite pursuit of superficial perfection that can never be attained. In a world where people are addicted to plastic surgeries and countless forms of body enhancement (from Goodlife to Sephora), foregoing things like knowledge and experience in their sole focus on living life ostensibly. We’re now at the verge of insanity, if not well over it.
The solution to minimize the exposure to this addiction and breaking down the dependence on it-What may be called for is a reality check to do away with digital narcissism – to live with social media rather than living through social media.
Try to put away your phone for intervals of time, first for 10 minutes, then for 30 minutes and so forth. Is that really so difficult? But when you pause to think about it, when was the last time you had gone an hour or two (or maybe even 10 minutes) without touching your phone?
There is a challenge to you to leave your phone behind the next time you embark on a picture- perfect moment or to do away with posting pictures of every meal on Instagram.
The selfie craze, “What a tragic waste of engagement. Enjoy the moment. Do something more worthwhile with your time, anything. Stare out the window and think about life”
So if you find yourself snapping away and capturing life through the lens of your camera, add a new perspective. Work to minimize your social media presence, take in the best of life’s moments without the need to seek approval or commentary from others. Live your own life – don’t live before the eyes of others.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here