Selfie Culture Promotes A Degraded Worldview

A photograph, painting, canvas, or drawing today is not the same as it was a decade ago. Technology has evolved to the point where we can photoshop a person into a picture, enlarge a person’s butt, or even whiten people’s teeth. At what point do those technological advances cross a line? With social media ranging from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Tumblr, do these media sites promote egotistical behavior? In January of 2013, John Paul Titlow discusses some of the disadvantages and advantages that Instagram has in his essay: “#Me: Instagram Narcissism and the Scourge of the Selfie” that was posted on a website called ReadWrite. Although Instagram was primarily created to simply share pictures, it has evolved to do much more than that. Some businesses use it to advertise, some people use it to share their art, but then there are some people use it to flaunt their own personal lives in the form of pictures. Titlow acknowledges that Instagram is a desirable way to share art and diverse imagery, but additionally acknowledges that it can be a place where one can promote their own self-popularity. He explains that Instagram has become remarkably important in people’s lives to the point that they cannot view life past those Instagram likes (Titlow). Ultimately, Titlow succeeds in emphasizing the issues that Instagram has created by reason of the way he expresses his text, while furthermore expressing who the audience of his essay is, and by making his overall purpose clear.

He puts it best by using the example of the tourist who has waited his whole life to see the canyon. Once he gets there, he is only comparing what he sees in front of him with what he has seen in other places like postcards and pictures. He says that we do not appreciate the sheer vastness or the enormity of what has been laid in front of us but instead spend our time taking pictures and judging our experiences by how many shots we take. Daily, I fight a battle with social media. The most prominent example is not getting wrapped up in taking pictures and up loading them for others to see and “Like”. I make a conscious effort to make sure my life does not consist of getting validation from others about my thoughts or my actions. There is a fine line between sharing and sharing for authentication. This causes people to give others the ability to assign value to a person’s experiences.

it of envy and depression. It begins explaining how Facebook works and how some options in it can affect our society in a negative way, but end the introduction saying that is up to us the purpose for which we use Facebook, but the main purpose of the author in this article refers to Instagram, which the author thinks is worst than Facebook because it only gathers the bad aspects about Facebook which the author says are “loitering around others’ photos, perfunctory like-ing, and “broadcasting” to a relatively amorphous group” an example will be that the photos on Instagram promote self-promote because when people look at one beautiful picture one way

About 5 years ago when social media really began to take off, researched noticed that almost 80% of things posted on social media were very self-oriented. Not too long after this realization, two researchers from Harvard decided to investigate about how these self-oriented posts impacted the human mind. Ultimately, they found that sharing

Social media's main purpose is to connect with others and socialize in a spectacular, and modern way online. According to ¨the upside of selfies: social media isn't all bad for kids” by Kelly Wallace (CNN), Wallace interviews Eileen Masio, a mother of two in New York that are big users of instagram; social media. In the interview Masio states,” ‘i think as damaging as social media could be, it can… help to build self confidence,too,’ ” Masio also reveals an example of how social media builds self confidence,” ‘when they post selfies, all the comments I usually see are ‘Your beautiful,’ ‘You’re so pretty,’ oh my god gorgeous,’” evidently, this shows that social media doesn't just help connect people, but can also help build confidence to those who might need some, or think that they are less than what they are.

Journalist Anna Hart argues this is the new era of people sharing selfies on a daily basis, that society has reached into “the age vanity, the digital vanity, you can argue no generation is immune from the selfie craze” (Hart,2014). A selfie has a variety of audiences from children capturing their best look to The Pope, it’s the new way of capturing evidence of your interaction with different people, better than asking for an autograph. However, in Hart’s (2014) article she argues that the idea that there is a need to look a certain way all of the time, especially when you are posting a selfie on social media, it almost has to be perceived in a positive way, showing the best selfie. Hart (2014) said “I need to look healthy, glossy and polished

The world we live in today has a saying “If you didn’t take pictures, it was like you were never there.” The passage “When We Save Every Memory, We Forget Which Ones Are Special,” by Dara Horn, describes how technology has made it easy for everyone to save any and almost every memory through social media. People might want to capture every memory for the fear of being forgotten or for the fact that they will be able to look back on every memory of their lives. A problem with people saving every memory of their lives is that when you look back at them, it will be hard to distinguish the treasured memories from the trash because of the huge amounts of captured memories. I believe that the idea presented here is that the abuse of modern technology has driven us to try to show ourselves to the world through social media, making the photo of ourselves more like a resume rather than actual memories we cherish.

“No one is forced to take selfies, but the preponderance of selfie culture inspires a heightened self-consciousness of our personal images online.” This is apart of the Times Article, and how peer pressure is the cause of people being self-consciousness about what they post online.

She starts by talking about a woman, sitting at an outdoor café, taking multiple selfies with multiple poses and facial expressions. Syme then cuts to a group of people, who could be anyone, whispering about the woman taking selfies and judging her behind her back (Syme). Syme’s choice of words to describe the actions of the group watching the woman, such as ‘snickering’ and ‘sneer’, emphasize the fact that what the group is doing is wrong. Her phrasing sends the message that selfies are commonly hated against, and that a selfie is much more than what other people think. In doing so, Syme successfully proves her claim that selfies are

The poster typically edits their pictures so they have the best lighting, do not look fat or unattractive, meanwhile their friends are having the times of their lives doing fun activities or trips. Remo even admits that she is insecure in pictures and often takes multiple pictures before she posts them, just to make sure that they do not appear “real”. The psychological effect on posting gives individuals a rush, a “Harvard study concluded that writing about ourselves on social media stimulates the same part of our brain we use when eat food, are given money … or have sex,” (Remo 5). Posting makes people feel like they are important, and important to those that like the picture. However, social media can be the cause of jealousy, especially when people your age are having more fun and experiences than you are. It makes the viewer wonder why they cannot have that lifestyle, or do the things their friends are doing. Remo recalls that a friend of hers became so upset with her life at graduate school, while Remo was going to bars, the beach, vacations in the summer. The girl cried because Remo’s life seemed better than hers, but Remo was the complete opposite. She posted those photos to make it seem like her life was better than it really was, emotionally, physically, and financially, but it was not what her life really was, “I don’t even remember that time in

In the novel, the greater focus is on exploration and developments in technology which do exist in modern society. Taking the previous statement into consideration, this idea can be relayed back the way people use the internet. When posting on social media, many people’s first thought when they post a picture, tweet, or status is how their posts will make their followers feel. The ultimate goal for many is to showcase their lifestyle; this is not necessarily to make others envious, even though this is sometimes the case, but to overcompensate for the things in their lives that are not going as they wish they were. The best way to represent this point is in remembering “how important it is to show everyone the fun you’re having through pictures” in today’s age (Why Social Media is Destroying Out Social Skills). With this being the most important motive in the minds of many, social skills are ruined as individuals find it more necessary to be flashy than happy. Because of how easy it is to access each other’s lives, it is very tempting for one to feel discouraged or intimidated by another’s lifestyle. As a result of that, social platforms, especially those like Instagram, have become a place where people seem to compete to see who has the most

Yet now, nearly two centuries later, we find ourselves at a challenging crossroads. We live in the era of the selfie. Our lives are not directly experienced as much as they are Snapchatted, Instagrammed, and Tweeted, constituting a sort of composite selfie. We embrace a twenty-first century of technology, yet one might wonder what there is to be said of a society that is so devoted to taking its own picture.

I don’t know about you, but others have this false conception that only naturally talented people can capture eye-catching images. That is only half true. Of course you need skill, but we often forget that the greatest among us were once obscure amateurs. Just like, “Anyone can cook,” according to fictional chef, Gusteau, anyone can take a picture. Advances in modern technology have made sure of that. Just pull out your “smart” phone and take a selfie. It just requires a little training and experience. (More on that

To begin with, selfie shaming has illustrated how social norms in new media culture conflict with the social norms of older generations. Unlike the social norms of new media culture, more traditional social norms call for people to use technology moderately and in the appropriate places. This is exemplified by how the sports announcers commented that “Every girl in the picture is locked into her phone. Every single one is dialled in. Welcome to parenting in 2015! They’re all just

In much the same way as Goffman described life as a play; it called “Dramaturgy”, people are learning to perform their self in everyday life. Erving Goffman defines dramaturgy, “in which social life is analyzed in term of drama or the stage;” (115). Social media allows people to use different forms of impression management. According to Henslin defines impression management, “People’s efforts to control the impressions that others receive of them.” (115) In my analysis of person B’s Facebook posts I noticed several trends. In the four photos that were selfies I noticed some particular facial expressions, one of Goffman’s sign vehicles. In the four selfies I analyzed, the person was smiling as her facial expression. I believe that the reason she makes this face is to give the impression that she was happy, and make the others who checked her pictures feel happy and think of her as a friendly