Selfies ruin childhood, says top author

THE obsession with selfies and social media is undermining childhood innocence, according to an award-winning writer.

Jacqueline Wilson, who is best known for the Tracy Beaker books for young readers, warned that girls were succumbing to an ‘awful kind of self consciousness’.

Appearing at the London Book Fair, the 72year-old said: ‘There are so many pressures – and I don’t want to sound like this terrible technophobe – but I do think there is this awful way of looking at pictures.

‘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.’

Dame Jacqueline also condemned Twitter, saying there was pressure to put up posts that garnered social approval.

But she said the world had become a more equal place for women: ‘It is wonderful now that girls are expected to achieve and have brilliant careers.

‘When I was a girl if you were considered bright there were two occupations – do you want to be a nurse or do you want to be a teacher? Nothing else was ever considered so we have moved forward enormously.

‘In many ways it is wonderful how much more open we are as a society and for young people and yet we’re also closed because there is just a particular roof that we have to walk on.’

Dame Jacqueline introduced the character Tracy Beaker in 1991 as a stroppy teenager in a children’s home who longs to be adopted and have a place she can call home.

The books were the basis of an award-winning children’s TV show, aired on CBBC.

The character will return in October with My Mum Tracy Beaker, which sees Tracy as a single mum struggling to make ends meet and deal with her nine-year-old daughter.