Are self ie likes worth an 8-year jail stretch?

EVEN by the admittedly drastic lengths taken by some social media stars to enhance their instafame, Melina Roberge aka Cocaine Babe is thankfully in a league of her own. She is the first internet sensation to pay for her chosen career with an eight-year stretch in the slammer, after agreeing to become a drug mule as a way to achieve fame on Instagram.

It’s pretty certain that if Melina had been asked to smuggle €20m worth of cocaine into Australia by air or motorway she would have declined.

But a luxury round-the-world cruise was simply too good an insta-opportunity for the 22-year-old Canadian to refuse.

Stopping at exotic ports in Peru, Tahiti, Panama and Bermuda while crossing several oceans, the possibilities for smouldering bikini shots with her former porn star companion Isabelle Lagacé were endless.

While drug deals were struck below deck, the glamorous pair, acting as decoys, draped themselves around guests and cabin crew, topped off their tans and posed for their crucial rating-stopping selfies.

Melina told the court that she was at the time ‘a stupid young woman’ who put everything on the line for some selfies ‘in exotic locations and post them on Instagram to receive “likes” and attention.’

NOT surprisingly, the female judge responded with a blistering attack on Melina’s obsession with her online life. ‘It is a very sad indictment on her relative age group in society to seem to get self-worth relative to posts on Instagram. It is sad they seek to attain such a vacuous existence where how many likes they receive are their currency...’ said Judge Kate Traill.

‘This highlights the negative influence of social media on young women.’

The harmful effect of social media on females has also been remarked upon, albeit in a less extreme context, by the awardwinning writer Jacqueline Wilson.

‘I find it really interesting when doing thousands of selfies with young girls and they all have this special selfie face that they’ve practised in the mirror for ages and ages.

‘Now girls are expected all to have long gorgeous hair, to be relatively willowy. It’s this awful kind of self-consciousness all the time whereas I don’t remember worrying all the time about what other people thought of us,’ she said.

It’s not just the generation gap that’s behind the disapproval of Wilson, or the Australian judge, for our selfie culture.

They both came of age when there were fewer opportunities for women in life so they might also be dismayed at how desperately young women chase popularity, when there are so many other ways they can build self-esteem and their identity.

Of course it’s not just girls who have fallen under technology’s hypnotic spell. Comedian David Baddiel posted a picture of his son sitting on a cliff face, surrounded by a scene of breathtaking natural beauty.

The young Baddiel however is oblivious; as the waves crash around him he’s glued to his screen, perhaps at his Instagram feed of selfproclaimed selfie queens and identikit social-media stars caked in make-up with spider eye lashes and bleached veneers.

HIS zombified disengagement from the Great Outdoors may be an alarming sign of the pervasiveness of smartphone addiction, or an amusing reminder of youthful alienation. But there’s a vital difference between Baddiel and the millions of young women who pout and preen for the camera. He’s the observer, while their preferred pastime is to be observed, ideally favourably.

The influence of selfie pioneer Kim Kardashian has helped create a world where many youngsters feel that their self-worth is determined by the amount of likes on their latest photo and whose lives are practically given over to that end.

Getting likes on her photos started out as a fun hobby for Melina Roberge, but it became a dangerous obsession and then a huge personal disaster.

Her pathetic case of selfie-enslavement means that, along with suicidal thoughts and depression, we can add imprisonment and criminality to the destructive effects of social media.