In this social media era, it is quite common for us to take selfies and then post them on our social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and the list goes on. I must admit that I am guilty of this at times. However, when a person becomes obsessed with taking selfies, is this a sign of mental illness?
Those who take a lot of selfies and then post them on their social media accounts tend to track the number of views and likes that their selfies get. Their self-worth and their opinion of themselves are determined by the number of views and likes that they get. This is definitely unhealthy but is this a sign of mental illness? To answer this question, I decided to go online and research whether there have been any studies done on this subject.
Fox and Rooney studied the relationship between selfie taking and personality and their results were published in the Journal of Research in Personality. Their study concluded that more selfies a person posted, the person tend to have higher level of narcissism, psychopathy and self-objectification. This means that the person tend to be very self-centered, have a grandiose opinion of themselves and an extreme need to be admired by others. They also tend to be impulsive and lack empathy. A person that is high in self-objectification tend to view himself and based his self-worth in terms of his physical appearance.
Another expert, Dr. David Veale opined that those who take excessive selfies may suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). BDD can be described as an obsession with one more perceived flaws in appearance which are unnoticeable to others. They tend to be very self-conscious and defined themselves by these flaws.
Sarah Graham in her article for MailOnline, reported of a case where Danny Bowman, a British teenager tried to take his own life because he was unhappy about how he looked in his selfies. In a typical day, he would spend up to 10 hours taking more than 200 selfies in his effort to find the perfect picture of him.
For many, taking a selfie is just a fun thing to do and to capture what we are doing at the moment. The problem arises when we become too obsessive with taking selfies and let our self-worth be determined by the number of views and likes that we receive. So what do you think? Are you taking too many selfies? Are the experts correct? Is taking excessive selfies a symptom of mental illness?
References:
Fox, J., & Rooney, M. C. (2015). The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites. Personality & Individual Differences.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2601606/Take-lot-selfies-Then-MENTALLY-ILL-Two-thirds-patients-body-image-disorders-obsessively-photos-themselves.html
Do check out my previous posts.
God, You Are My Everything
Hidden Gems Of Magnificent Moscow Part 2: The Izmailovsky Market
Work Life Balance: Reality Or Myth?
First Steemit Meeetup In Kuching And Other Firsts For Me
Spreading positivity one post at a time.
Charles
If you like my writing please up-vote, share and comment. Please help me to spread the message of positivity and support on Steemit by resteeming this post.
