Mind power – The selfie trap

We take one MILLION SELFIES every day, but are we doing this to hide our EGOTISM or SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES? Experts reveal.

Kim Kardashian and her sister squad live their lives on Instagram, constantly feeding us selfies of their luxurious lifestyle. For the likes of Kim and Blac Chyna, selfies are a form of business, while for celebs like Teyana Taylor, they use it to show off their slimmer bodies just days after giving birth. Kim even went as far as teaching her followers how to take a perfect selfie in order to grow your social media following.

Aspirant musician Sebina used selfies to buy into a life she aspires to. “I just stand next to a beautiful building and write ‘#lifeisgood’, pretending that it’s my house. In return I get more likes; something I never had growing up. I get excited and feel a sense of belonging when I see the hearts in reply to my posts,” says the 28-year-old.

French psychoanalyst and philosopher Elsa Godart became obsessed with finding out how and why one can lose consciousness to that extent. Godart once treated a young girl who’d taken semi-naked pictures of herself that went viral. She was distraught as the images were intended for her man. The parents were upset “and it all came down to this momentary lapse of consciousness,” the 37-year-old explains.

When Godart began to delve deeper into the apparently neutral and playful world of ‘selfies’, she found repeated and sometimes fatal instances of these “critical black-outs.”

ADOLESCENT CRISIS

“In 2015, a British parliamentary candidate took a selfie on the Tunisian beach where 38 tourists had just been gunned down, and at former SA president Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, former British prime minister David Cameron, ex US President Barack Obama and the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt forgot where they were long enough to lean in for a selfie. So I became obsessed with finding out how and why one can lose consciousness to that extent?”

Godart’s far from alone in her concerns over the selfie trend: psychologist Dr Tanya Byron warned that sexualised, unrealistic images posted by celebs were fuelling depression and eating disorders in young people. In Godart’s new book,

I Selfie Therefore I Am, she examines a society she describes as being “stuck in a state of adolescent crisis.” Far from giving us a stronger sense of our own identities, she insists, the one million odd selfies taken every day across the world, will only propagate insecurities and provoke precisely the kind of neurotic and self-questioning behaviour that characterises adolescence. “We forget that adolescence isn’t a very enjoyable time: we don’t know what we stand for or where we’re going, and we’re in a state of crisis.”

NARCISSISTIC BEHAVIOUR

Selfies are often lamented as a symptom of narcissism – indeed, a recent study found people who take them tend to overestimate how good-looking they are, but Godart says that’s not the major problem. “Narcissm isn’t always bad,” says Godart, who admits she’s fond of taking the odd selfie herself. “In fact, it has a useful side: it’s necessary when we’re infants who, after all, start out life mesmerised by our own image in the mirror. Small children are literally their own love interests: they find jubilation in pictures of themselves.”

According to one study, narcissistic personality disorder remains a severe and fairly rare clinically diagnosed condition. Ever increasing levels of greed, self-obsession, superficial relationships, arrogance and vanity are everywhere. Seemingly irreversible alterations to family life, technological development, including social media, attitudes to death and dying and celebrity worship, all feature in the rise of our narcissistic society and are interconnected trend.

Not unlike Kim or Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift then? All of whom seem to be locked into the ‘mirror stage’, and drawn to any reflective surface in much the same way as children were as toddlers? “Actually that’s more a case of egotism: the cult of ‘me’,” corrects Godart.

SELF-ABSORBED EGO

At the heart of the selfie is a contradiction, Godart explains. “What may look like straight-forward narcissism can often be insecurity and a craving for reassurance: a reassurance that you can only ever get from ‘likes’. But you’re chasing the dragon, because far from calming any neuroses down (although it may do this for a second), posting another selfie will only amplify them.” This may explain extreme cases such as that of Danny Bowman, the British teenager who was treated for body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts in 2014 after ditching school, locking himself in his room for six months and taking up to 200 photos a day in a quest for the perfect selfie. In a Gulf News article Dr Saliha Afridi, the clinical psychologist said that those who grew up using social media show more traits of personality disorders. “Social media and sharing of the self on the different platforms can encourage individuals to be more self absorbed, and display other narcissistic traits.”

The approval, recognition and appreciation that people get from posting pictures and getting ‘likes’ on their selfies can feed into a person being more self absorbed. Some tend to derive their self-esteem from the validation they get from their online network, Afridi explained. She pointed out that some researchers are looking in to how selfies can actually make a person feel good about them because they’re in control of the outcome of the picture.

Lebo, 32, feels good about her life and everyone who follows her on social media knows about it. She posts the expensive brands she wears, the places she dines at, exotic travels with friends and more loving pictures with her man. “I love it, especially when I get more likes. The world now knows my man and no woman will mess up with him!,” she quips.

Although the psychoanalyst worries about the number of young girls and boys she sees “caught in a social media and reality TV-fuelled obsession with marketing themselves as a product and selling themselves to the world”, Godart is not in the blame game. “I’m not here to judge or say that this is down to any one celebrity or public figure in particular, because they’re all doing it.”

GET REAL

Where it becomes worrying is when the illusory virtual self you’re selling is more appealing than the real self. So you can Photoshop yourself into your ideal and of course that illusion is so perfect that nobody wants real life anymore. “So I could lounge around like a slob all day at home,” says Godard, “whilst constructing this shining virtual image of myself online, and that’s going to paralyse my actions in real life, because I can never get anywhere near the perfection of my virtual life.”

It’s that disparity that concerns the psychoanalyst most. Indeed one study in the book shows that the more selfies people take, the less sex they have. “It makes sense that the more time spent in a virtual world, the less open you’re going to be to others in any capacity – but certainly sexually.”

There’s even a site – beautifulagony.com – where people can post pictures of their own faces at the point of orgasm, thereby doing away with any need for a sexual partner.

“Although selfies can be harmless and fun, there’s a real danger of us losing our connection to and consciousness of the world around us. I’m not here to make moral judgements or give advice; all I’d say is: spend ten hours a day on the internet if you want, but be capable of going beyond that screen in life, because otherwise what you’re really losing is your own freedom.”

Gordat emphasises the importance of having solid relationships with friends and family, and to spend as much time with them to avoid the trap of an unsustainable ‘selfie world’.