The Reasons Why Selfies Are Detrimental to Society

Selfies are photographs that one takes of himself or herself. When the front-facing camera became conventional, selfies became more prominent in modern-day culture. This created the slang term “selfie” as well as the utilization of selfies to become popular. According to one of Google’s reports, people take 93 million selfies per day using their android devices. In another poll, youngsters between the age of eighteen to twenty-four years old reported that every third photo they take is a selfie. Selfies have become a traditional means of self-expression. But this is not entirely true. Selfies have ruined people’s lives, mainly for the younger generation between the ages of ten and thirty. Research studies and my personal experiences support my reasoning as to why selfies are harmful. Selfies are one of the causes of death for adolescents and adults, they take away from the moment and make people feel less confident or self-centered and more conscious of themselves.

One of the main reasons why selfies are detrimental to society is because they are a cause of death for people under eighteen. According to research conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a group of public medical colleges based in New Delhi, “More than 250 people worldwide have died while taking selfies in the last six years”. This research proves the fact that many of the youngsters are so consumed by how they look that they forget where they are, unnecessarily harming themselves. This can also be further supported by the following example. One day, I was reading the newspaper, by the name of Dawn News, when I came across an article about a young teen, around the same age as me, who died a few kilometers away from my house. This was not shocking until I discovered, after reading the sub-headline which stated that “A young teen fell off of a cliff while taking a selfie”.

The article detailed that the person wanted to get that “perfect shot” of himself and went too close to the edge of the cliff from where he fell. There have been several other incidents related to the pursuit of selfies causing death. People tend to forget where they are while taking a selfie and to get that “perfect shot” they, quite literally, wander off too close to dangerous places. Another horrifying incident, which occurred a few months ago, was that a teenage girl was visiting her grandmother’s house during the Summer. Her family decided to go for a picnic, to the park beside the river as the scenery there was breathtakingly beautiful. The girl was trying to get a selfie of herself, to send it to her friends, when she fell into the river. Her father jumped in to save her but due to the river pressure, both of them died. Both of these incidents portray how selfies are becoming a major cause of death for people, especially for the younger population.

Selfies also take away the fun and spoil the moment. People usually miss a once in a blue moon chance, because they are too focused on their pictures right before uploading them to social media. Individuals who take a lot of selfies typically become engrossed in creating a positive image of themselves online. Recently, I was reading an article by The Walrus on a new tourist attraction called The Happy Place, which opened in Toronto. The article states that, “Pop-up attractions like the Happy Place are built for selfies”. This shows that The Happy Place was constructed for the main purpose of encouraging people to take selfies and sharing them on social media, but does anyone actually enjoy going there? Another example that illustrates how selfies distract people and take away from the moment, is when I went to the zoo with my brother and cousins. One of my cousins was going around, looking for the perfect spot to take a selfie of himself.

Selfies make people feel less confident and more self-conscious. As people take more selfies, it becomes the center of their world and they start to only care about their online persona. Feeling self-conscious carries forward and makes people more anti-social, which is potentially harmful. People who take selfies become narcissistic. This can also be seen in the famous episode of Black Mirror called Nosedive where the main character, Lacy Pound, is so focused on taking good photos of herself that she stops talking to people who have a worse repute than her on social media, this eventually separates her from society and she ends up in jail. Although this is a dystopian drama, Black Mirror illustrates that taking selfies can be potentially harmful, if they are abused. This adds to the point that people who take more selfies of themselves tend to brag about their photos online, and they like or dislike people based on whether or not people react to their pictures on social media. A recent research study at York University determined that people who take selfies are less confident and feel more insecure than the ones who take more selfies and edit them.