The smartphone self portraits known as selfies are the internet craze of 2013. Illustrating how much of a craze the use of the word selfie has reached, Oxford Dictionaries announced selfie as their international Word of the Year 2013.
In the Oxford Dictionaries blog Editorial Director Judy Pearsall explains, “Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme, which collects around 150 million words of current English in use each month, we can see a phenomenal upward trend in the use of selfie in 2013, and this helped to cement its selection as Word of the Year.”
Selfie is the breakout buzzword of 2013, the debate over the significance of selfies will be the hot topic in 2014.
Signs of a self absorbed world?
Showing many examples of selfies while interviewing several young people, and ending with comments about crazy self absorbed kids, the attached video attempts to put the selfie craze into perspective as a product of the younger generation.
The attached video cites data from the British publication The Telegraph stating that selfies account for 30% of the pictures taken in the 18 to 24 age group. Also mentioned is data from the National Institutes of Health stating that people in their 20's are three times more likely to suffer from narcissistic personality disorder than people 65 or older.
Are selfies good for self esteem?
A recent article in The Atlantic, Selfies Are Art, does a good job of putting the selfie craze into perspective. In discussing recent popular examples of selfies, author Noah Berlatsky examines the good and the bad. The article looks at the people creating selfies as artists, and the concept of selfies as a new genre of artistic expression.
In conclusion, Berlatsky emphasizes that selfies are simply portraits that represent different people. We need to be careful talking about the sociological implications of selfies collectively.
Putting selfies into perspective
The selfie is a tool, it is just another buzzword to describe a specific use of technology, in this case using social media to post a self portrait.
The selfie is also an illustration of adapting modern technology to an existing concept. The use of self portraits by artists became common during the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century.
Comparing selfies to an art form is similar to a point we often make about technology in general. Too often the focus is on buzzwords and fancy tools, and what they produce, rather than focus on the person using the tool.
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