Essay Selfie and Self Image

As the child-like desire to be admired becomes a general consensus for modern day teens, the world begins to see the vein nature that is becoming of its future generation. Teenagers today care more for followers and favorites than true family and friends. Allowing their obsession to be obsessed about by others take over their lives, solely to get a temporary fix of attention in the form of 'favorites' by screaming out in a toddler like fashion 'Look at me daddy, look what I have done' through the obsessive taking and uploading of the 'selfie'. Wearing the universal uniform of fake tan and pushup bras or the mask of the pout and peace sign. Living from photo-to-photo, teens record every action in a day and uploading it instantly to Instagram or Snapchat; existing only as a virtual identity, caging themselves behind the bars of the filters of a simple photo.

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.

I think the picture shows that in this day and age all we are concerned about is how we look, what pose we just did, what clothes we wear, and how we get judged by other people. We now live in a technology and social media driven world where people post pictures every few minutes of where they are, what there doing, what there wearing, what foods there eating, and every other thing imaginable in this world. There is an endless list of what people tweet, snap, and share that now a days that all we are doing. I think that sometimes social media make us self centered because all social media has become is us just talking about ourselves and our lives. Social media has also created people who are unaware of the actual world around them not the social media driven world online.

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 vast majority of millennial are well aware of a social media output called "Snapchat". Turn your selfies into a dog or cat or add some art to make it look spiffy. Give yourself cartoon eyes or make it seem as if your tongue is made of rainbows. Facebook profile pics are splashed with Snapchat filters that make the average selfie look ethereal with a wreath of flowers and a halo of light placed just so. From fancy to goofy, Snapchat seems to have just about every kind of filter out there to make your selfies fun.

1. Brooks, David. “Character in the Selfie Age.” The Importance of Character, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, 19 June, 2015, London. Guest

When teens go online they are faced with edited photos of their idols, or even people they don’t know. Popular social media sites such as tumblr, instagram, twitter, and facebook all have photos of “perfect” girls. Teens log onto these sites are immediately immersed in photos of everything they want to be. Instagram provides the opportunity for girls to edit their photos in such a way that a person would hardly be able to tell who it is anymore. Adding lighting, blurring the background, getting the picture at just the right angle. Teen girls are practically becoming professional photoshoppers at this point. “Encouraging” pictures flood the feed on the social media sites. Examples are “Every time you say no to food, you say yes to thin”, “Skinny jeans. Skinny shorts. Skinny for life.” and “Every time you skip dinner, you wake up thinner” (Marin,

On 19th November 2013, the word ‘selfie’ was named Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year. In a society where images are constantly being circulated, and with applications such as Snapchat being popular amongst a number of generations, this isn’t surprising. According to http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/ the expanded ramblings website, on 16th March 2014 it was recorded that Snapchat’s share of total selfies distributed on social media made up 5% of self-portraits shared worldwide. With 100 million daily users, and an average of 9000 snaps a second the app is one of the most popular ways of sharing ‘selfies’ through social media, amongst other website such as Facebook and Instagram. As well as every day communities using

A notable feature of narcissism is the selfie; the proliferation of selfies are an obvious illustration of narcissism. According to John Paul Titlow’s “#me: Instagram Narcissism and the Scourge of the Selfie,” there are more than 90 million self-portraits taken under #me, which is the third most frequently used hashtag on Instagram. There are images of varying quality, displaying faces of different people from different places. We are able to scroll through our feed and be able to access and view into the world of others. However, many people use selfies to seek approval from their friends, followers, and the larger community. For example, many young, teenage girls would post selfies up, showing some cleavage or arching their back so much to

A systematic examination of photographs can reveal many insights into the individual taking the picture. For example, Dijck (2008) explains that picture taking has been widely used as a way for people to save memories of events, a tool for communication and experience, and more recently, as a tool for identity development. For example, in the 20th century, people used photography to save memories to remember their lives (Dijck,2008). As time moved forward it evolved into using photography to communicate with others by sharing their experiences with social media. By using social media like Twitter for example, people share different types of pictures from selfies, to video game screenshots, to a photograph of a new jacket; which occurs not just in the United States but, all over the world (Thelwall, Goriunvova, Vis, Faulkner, Burns, Aulich, Mas-Bleda,

N.D. Wilson once said "I am here to paint you a picture of the world I see" and through these words I believe every selfie we share to the world is how you wish to portray to the world who you really are. Everyday millions of selfies are taken by people to express how they would like to look to others. The life of a typical teen is usually defined by the amount of selfies that are shown on their social media. Teenagers nowadays don 't often take the time to realize what their selfies mean. When we take selfies, we often don’t realize what we put up and we make people think that the “fake” pictures we put up are actually what we really are. In my 'true selfie ' I portrayed one of my strongest beliefs by using lighting effects, clothing, and my location.

On the other hand, social media has made a lot of impact on people’s lives; some have risen up to be social media elites, with millions of followers, while others use social media as a tool to connect with their friends and to get to know other people. In the dictionary the word “conversation” is defined as an “informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy” (Dictionary, 2015). However, texting, posting and sending selfies are editing types of conversations, making us think of how we are presenting ourselves when we communicate through social media, rather than having a real life conversation, meaning people having a conversation with each other by a oral communication, face to face, rather than using a mobile device or application. By doing so, we might

Look around you, whether you are at your favourite coffee shop or even at the local park, there is something that could never be overlooked. Selfies! What are selfies, you ask? Undoubtedly, you must be living under a rock. Well, let me shine some light upon you. A selfie is a picture you take of yourself. Yes, it is just that simple. You take out your smartphone, open the camera app and voila! You are good to go take selfies to your heart's content. Magical isn't it? How could something as simple as this be all the rage these days? Not to say this behaviour is nonsensical, there is actually some method to this madness. Let us take a more in-depth look at this topic, shall we?

In society today there are a vast amount of media outlets that give school aged kids, especially teenagers the impression that they must be the most popular; and up to date kid amongst their peers. With that being said, teenagers tend to feel that they need to express themselves anyway possible to stay relevant and get a better chance at the hierarchy of popularity that is almost always a necessity when it comes to your peers and acceptance in schools. What Better way to do that then at school with their appearance. With the growing trend of technology, and the commonly used word “Selfie” it is almost next to near impossible for a teen not to take a picture showcasing

In today’s society, the public is exposed to technology at even younger ages than ever before. Everywhere you go these days you see kids even as little as three holding their parent’s phones or even their own, watching videos or playing games. But as said in the article Does Social media impact on body image by Philippa Roxby, as kids start becoming teenagers their technological uses advance and they start to rely on social media sites for new sources of communication, and their main channel to the outside world. Based on studies conducted by psychologists they have come up with a conclusion that social media has a direct relationship to body image concerns. I believe that in today’s society we should focus on promoting self-confidence as most of the adolescents have a very low assurance of their own bodies. Although a study conducted in the article The Upside of Selfies: Social media isn’t all bad for kids by Kelly Wallace says that a survey which resulted in 52% of the teens saying that social media positively influences them. Even though social media platforms have some beneficial aspects such as they make people want to go on diets, exercise, and eating healthy, the teenagers don’t really look/understand the negative aspects of it. The impacts that are carried with social media are mostly negative such as fancying teenagers to lose confidence in themselves and has become a toxic mirror to them. The visual platforms impact