Is selfie a mental illness?

According to the American Psychiatric Association, "selfie addiction" is a mental illness. Divines, who is keen on taking selfies, please worry about her mental health.

Bazinga, I lied to you! Don't be angry, you're not the only one who has been fooled. Many domestic media have been fooled and reprinted this report seriously.

If you think you have taken countless selfies, you can pat your knees and turn on the front camera with peace of mind. However, why do selfies become a common practice? Does "selfie addiction" really need to worry?

Today, let's talk about why humans take selfies.

The history of selfie is as long as that of narcissism.

There is a famous teacher named Chen in the Jianghu. Not long ago, the media reported that Danny Bowman, a British boy, took more than 200 selfies every day and spent 10 hours on it. Self-portrait for 2 years, can't bear to commit suicide. Fortunately, I tried to kill myself.

In fact, the history of selfie is not long, nor is it short. Before photography was invented, painters were painting themselves. For example,/kloc-Leonardo da Vinci in the 6th century and/kloc-Rembrandt in the 7th century all have masterpieces of self-portraits. Emperor Qianlong is also a person who is keen on "taking selfies", but the emperor is of course taller. He dressed himself as a bodhisattva, scholar and herbalist, and then ordered the painter to paint and appreciate.

1838, man put his own image on film for the first time. The following year, American photographer Robert cornelius took the first selfie in history. The word "selfie" first appeared in 1984, and its English scientific name is Self-timer. At that time, it was just a function that the camera could set its own shooting time. More than one hundred years later, selfie has become a global online fashion.

American photographer Robert cornelius's selfie, the first selfie of mankind.

In 20 13, "selfie" became the annual hot word of Oxford University Press, and this photo was taken from TakaPhotoo photo studio in the United States.

At present, the most retweeted pictures on Twitter are also selfies. The blogger is Allen Dejanis, the host of the 86th Academy Awards. The content of the photo is a live selfie with other stars, which was forwarded more than two million times and won more than one million "likes".

Live selfies of stars at the 86th Academy Awards Ceremony

Narcissistic culture is particularly prosperous in high-pressure life.

From a psychological point of view, selfie is a self-reinforcing process. People tend to care about themselves more or less, that is, "narcissism." The word "narcissism" comes from psychoanalysis and is widely known because of Freud's On Narcissism.

The second stage of narcissism is pathological narcissism, and selfie addiction undoubtedly belongs to this stage. Psychoanalyst Kang Barker described the personality characteristics of narcissists as "multiple personality characteristics such as ambition, exaggerated delusion, inferiority complex, desperate desire for praise and applause from others". Please copy this passage and paste it in the comments of the circle of friends.

Since World War II, a large number of narcissists with extreme individualistic tendencies have emerged in western developed countries represented by the United States. "These personality characteristics related to morbid narcissism appear in a large number in the daily life of our time in a more common form." Pre-schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder-narcissism has become a universal personality characteristic in consumer society.

As social animals, people have the desire to share and communicate. Modern fast-paced life makes people's life more stressful, and selfie is a kind of pressure release.

People post photos of their lives online, eager to get attention and affirmation on the network platform, satisfying the psychological needs of being concerned, allowing the unknown public to show themselves and get virtual attention. People are more or less "narcissistic" and thus feel satisfied. Or see others taking selfies and want to take the initiative to try taking selfies. Everyone's instinctive voyeurism will also make this private selfie more attractive. These psychological needs play a role, making online selfies a craze.

Is selfie really addictive?

Back to Danny Bowman, a British boy who is addicted to taking selfies, he committed suicide because he could never take satisfactory photos. People's self-portrait addiction has general psychological doubts, and they always feel that they are not as good-looking as they are in reality.

There is a term in psychology called "exposure effect", which means that the more times something appears, the higher people's affection for it. Also known as multi-view effect, (simple, pure) exposure effect, (pure) contact effect and so on.

Because of the exposure effect, we will have a better impression of ourselves in the mirror. Because before taking selfies, we have seen ourselves in the mirror countless times, and when taking selfies, people will feel strange because of the different angles and freeze-frame effects, which is why everyone will cry when taking selfies, and then keep shooting until they are satisfied, or they will never be satisfied.

On the other hand, people keep shooting and shooting. Because of the "exposure effect", they gradually feel that they are getting more and more beautiful in photos, and they can't stop taking pictures of themselves, so as to enhance their self-confidence. What's more, using various self-timer artifacts and Mito software to add points to self-timer Mito, this false self-appreciation and intoxication is hard to extricate.

People who constantly take selfies gradually feel that they are getting more and more beautiful in photos because of the "exposure effect" and can't stop.

I hope today's article won't hurt my little friend who loves taking selfies. I wish you happiness.

refer to

1. On the Body Politics of Online Self-portrait Images by Chen Junhong.

2. Christopher Rush: narcissistic culture