The Pros And Cons Of Selfie

In this article “Note to selfie” John Dickerson an American journalist explains there may be a deeper reason why people now a days are obsessed with documenting their lives through their phones and social media. The author had a habit of writing down sayings he heard and thoughts he had throughout the day in this small journal. He compared writing in these journals to what others do every day on social media and on their phones. It is important to capture these moments so you can keep them with you forever, like he did with the journals. He himself admits to using his phone a lot to document things he finds meaning in. Stopping to document these things, either through writing or picture, means you are actively engaging with what is going on, according to the author. If you find meaning in something and want to either capture it for yourself or for the rest of the world to see, it means that you are connected to what is going on around you, enough to actually take

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

“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.

Taking and sharing new selfies is always easier than the fearful unknown of

In which I say is the tipping point in where the idea of showing your best assets online came to be. Creating a perfect profile with the trendiest bathroom mirror selfie and having the power of an exclusive top 8 list was a huge deal to a teen living in the early 2000s. As years grew by, the ability to record, snap, send and post became at such ease. I was among many other people who were sucked into this lifestyle. I always had an act for photography, I self-taught and gained loved creating something and anything through this media. I’ve put tremendous effort into taking pictures of experiences or what I had for dinner last night and shared them on Instagram and Snapchat; Gaining quite a following for me. Unfortunately as talented as I am, this sycophant ego developed underneath it all. In between my actions, I was gloating to friends on how much ‘likes’ I racked up on a certain photo. Other times, where I would catch myself saying to friends, “hey I noticed you haven’t been showing me any love (like) on my IG pictures.” Cringing as it sounds, those actually words have come out of my mouth. This culture has turned me this servant to please people’s admiration towards my photos. I was constantly posting just to gain more like, to gaining more followers and up my ranking in the popularity

By giving these examples, Syme proves that her claim is valid, and that the selfie really is revolutionary. Syme’s claims that selfies are revolutionary can be proven by statistics. According to Infogram, one million selfies are taken each day by 18 to 24 year olds. Also, there are 58,425,492 photos tagged with the hashtag ‘selfie’ on Instagram (‘Selfie’ Statistics). With those numbers in mind, it is no wonder there is so much revolutionary potential for selfies.

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,

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

Van Dijck (2008) suggests that, “Communication and identity formation are not novel uses but have always been intrinsic functions of photography” (p.59). In the contemporary culture, especially among the younger generations, individuals are constantly posting images on social media sites to share their experiences online. This is particularly evident in the social media platform, Snapchat in which a study done in 2014 found that Snapchat users had sent over 700 million photos and videos per day (Lunden & Tsotsis, 2014). Snapchat is a mobile application which allows users to send snapshots or videos to friends with a brief message in the form of drawing or text. The company suggests that each snap ‘reflect an individual in the moment without the need to curate an everlasting persona’ (“Ads Snapchat,” 2015) This can be explained by the unique function of Snapchat as images will disappear after the set time expires. Therefore, the use of digital photography in Snapchat best represents how digital photography becomes a tool for communication, enabling users to connect and getting in touch. On the contrary, there are other social media networks that not only offer as a site for sharing experiences but also enable individuals to construct an ‘ideal’

Selfie deaths will continue to rapidly increase in the years to come unless we fight the power of device control. Deaths caused from “self portraits” is not only an embarrassing death but a serious one as well. Doctors actually associate this disorder to as “Selfitis” This is linked to narcissism and obsessive compulsive disorder. The only way selfie and social media addiction becomes a problem, is when we become obsessed with replacing our self esteem with a documented piece of self made artwork. Funny enough, the more we put our phones away, the more we accomplish, thus the more confident we feel leading to less self esteem issues. Possible questions to ask ourselves. Rather than documenting our lives for others to envy, shouldn’t we just live envious lives? And let the proof be

Are you a Narcissus? In Greek mythology, Narcissus, son of the River God, loved to stare at his reflection in the water. However, these days you won’t find someone staring at their reflection in the pond at the park, right? You would rather find someone staring at themselves in their smartphone screens after taking a good selfie. I’m sure the self-absorbed Narcissus would’ve loved selfies just as much as we all do.

Digital photography has been put together with social media applications much like Instagram. Instagram allows the user to instantly share their photographs on social media networking site. Hence, it provides the user with several digital photographic filters to use and possibilities for other manipulations. For example, cropping, cropping provides the user with user with easily used tools but it is also a constrained environment (Zappavigna, 2016) as there are restrictions, for example, on image dimension. The types of photographs made out that the selfie is the most common type of photo (Dinhopl & Gretzel, 2016). Dinhopl and Gretzel (2016) suggest that selfietaking, which is a social media related practice, has consequences for photography

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