Taking Selfies do’s and don’ts
By Lama Hatoum, Layan Zein, Maria khoury and Sarah Kaskas
A selfie is a self-portrait photograph typically taken with a smartphone held by hand.The selfie phenomenon has gone viral over the past few years and became one of the“coolest” trends amongst teenagers of the new generation. People nowadays take selfies almost every day and everywhere, to capture the moment that they are in and to save it as a digital memory. Although it has become very usual to take selfies on a daily basis, the questions that need to be asked are: What are the places that are inappropriate to take selfies in and why ? Are there any limits to take a selfie? We will answer these questions through a quick survey that we made on selfie cultures among Lebanese university students via social media applications and (Instagram, WhatsApp) and in real life. The survey points out how a selfie isn’t always accepted nor allowed, and how it is inappropriate for some situations that we may encounter in our daily life.
A selfie is the act of a person taking a photo of himself on his own. It includes a process of sharing on social media pictures of oneself for others to view, and often includes feelings, and different messages for different individuals. However, selfies are said to have many negative effects on people. Due to, the expanding of social media platforms and digitization of our world now, people are becoming more and more obsessed with social media, mobile phones, and the taking and sharing of pictures specially selfies. Since selfies involves a person taking his own picture, people are becoming self-obsessed leading to narcissism. “Selfies are not just a way to create a particular impression of one but a way of keeping oneself in other people’s minds.” (Tiefentale, 2014, p. 6). So, selfies are being used as a way to show people yourself, and many are gaining self-obsession because of selfies. In addition to that, selfies often do not give the reality of a person, so they are superficial, and are used to make appearances look better and more attractive. They are accused of being banal. Females are becoming more obsessed with selfies, since they tend to show attractiveness, beauty and watch themselves being looked at by men. According to Berger (1973) “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”. Moreover, selfies tend to produce a virtual person by always taking pictures and posting them. People are attached to a virtual world called social media, where they interact through these selfies by the likes, and comments they get. Thus, these negative influences of selfies cause social, cultural and psychological harms. On the social level, selfies are creating harms, since most people who are addicted to selfies are said to be women, which causes some differentiation between men and women. Selfies are sometimes taken in inappropriate places which are socially unaccepted. Selfies also empower or disempower, since sometimes people receive admiration of a post and in contrast sometimes not, and according to each reaction, the person either feels satisfied or feels down, this is on a psychological level. Moreover, selfies are changing the culture, what was before considered wrong is being right and normal, since selfies are a practice of everyday life, where people document and represent themselves. The culture is defined by its people, and people nowadays are defined by their selfies, “I document, therefore I am”. Therefore, selfies have negative impacts on different levels, but how does the theory of social constructivism explain these critiques?
The five steps of this selfie act consist of the human being, the image produced, the location, the device and the platform it will be posted on, it is called “Selfie Assemblage” (Senft & Baym, 2015). The element that really relates these steps and that is in power is the person himself. Yet we ask ourselves what pushes a person to take a selfie? This is where social constructivism theory plays a role in selfie taking. According to Paparcharissi, Z (2012), “In these networks that are particularly ego-centered, individuals at the center of their own networks take charge and adapt network norms to fit personal, cultural and social context”. Thus emphasizing that because in society selfies are the new trend, people adapt this trend as a norm and a “must do” to be accepted in society. So it is the person that observes and applies, yet it has negative and positive aspects. Firstly, selfies have a feeling of empowerment to some people, “For instance, it is relatively easy to imagine how someone might feel a sense of psychological and social wellbeing after posting images of his less-than-perfect body for others to view, and getting positive reinforcement for that act” (Senft & Baym, 2015). If a person uses selfies for a cause, this person himself will feel empowered, because he/she is empowering and helping others. Some hidden assumptions made about selfies are the locations they are taken in. For instance, our research showed that people truly hate when people take selfies in the bathroom, because no one wants to see your toothbrush, toilette or any personal hygiene objects.. Since, people are learning from observing they do not differentiate between right and wrong. For instance, people see stars like Kim Kardashian taking selfies in the bathroom or naked and posting it on social media, they tend to think this act is alright to do. This what cause moral panics for parents, “Children are often seen as innocents who can be corrupted, damaged and permanently transformed by technology in ways parents are powerless to prevent” (Baym, n.d). People tend to construct knowledge and meaning from their experiences, in this case their experiences is scrolling through social media and seeing these types of photos and assuming that this is correct. Thus, we can see that our findings of “where selfies are inappropriate to take” can support one of the negative aspects of selfie taking; the location adds new insights on selfie limitation.
Where is it inappropriate to take selfies and why? We went around asking individuals in real life and on social media what they think about this question, and the answers were some predictable and others were shocking. First, the people of Instagram and whats app replied to our question privately by direct messaging us, or by commenting on our post publicly. Many of the replies were pretty similar and overall these are all the replies we got, some were saying taking selfies in a bathroom is in appropriate because they find it to be a private place and as some said, “disgusting to share with others,” which for us was kind of shocking since most people take selfies by using their bathroom mirrors, but at the same time it is true that a bathroom is a private place that we shouldn’t share with everyone, as one said “if they want to take selfies there, at least don’t post them”
Moreover, some individuals said “professional” situations such as business meetings, conferences, workshops” are unsuitable to take selfies at. Doing so, will make you look less professional and give a different, less serious impression about you, which is something you wouldn’t want when you are at a conference or in a meeting. In addition to professional places, Selfies in hospitals, funerals, or religious places are not taken to be acceptable in respect to the dead and the sick. Another shocking reply was “Do not take a selfie when you are on stairs or in line,” as much as that was strange to hear, the reason is very logical. When you are in line or using stairs, people would be passing and walking next to you some will be in a hurry, and no one wants to be waiting for you to take that selfie or bump into you because how you stopped to take it. Furthermore, taking selfies when something urgent is happening around you, for example, a car accident or burning building because people are taking selfies instead of calling for help and saving lives. When talking about saving lives regarding a selfie, many people saw that taking selfies while driving is not right because you are at risk of having an accident, which means you are risking your life and other people’s lives. One other reply that was a bit unexpected is, do not take selfies when there is people behind you. Usually, we take a selfie thinking it is all about us and the people taking it with us forgetting that there is more in the picture than just us, but also the people in the background that don’t even know that their picture is being taken, we don’t get their permission, yet we tend to post it regardless. There is more to a selfie than just the person taking it, according to all the replies we got through instagram, whats app, and live interviews, a selfie is a big process, the person taking it should acknowledge their surrounding, their location, and whether is okay to post it or not. It is one thing to take a selfie and to keep it for yourself and a whole other thing to post it.
In conclusion, we got many similar responses to our main question. Some unexpected responses were found such as taking a selfie on the stairs, or when in line, which is something that is not usually thought about. This diversity in our responses made us think deeply about the dangers that the selfie may cause in our professional or private life, that’s why, we have to put limits to everything that involves showing or sharing moments of our lives. In the end, we can say that our observations on selfie cultures confirmed common critiques of the Selfie and did not give the complete absolute freedom for the selfie to break through our daily activities and events.
References
Baym, (n.d). Making sense of new media. P.23–27
Papacharissi, Z. (2012). Identity Performance and Sociability on Social Network Sites. P. 208–217
Senft, M & Baym, N. (2015). What Does the Selfie Say? Investigating a Global Phenomenon. International Journal of Communication. P.1589–1601
Tiefentale, A. (2014). Selfiecity: Making Sense of the “Masturbation of Self Image” & the “Virtual Mini me”. The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), p. 6
