While the first ever example dates back to 1839, they’ve become so commonplace in recent years, they’ve earned a place in the Oxford Dictionary and have actually spawned equipment to better enabling taking them.
Your grandparents probably even know what a selfie is. Maybe they’ve even been in one themselves – such is their reach.
There’s two camps when it comes to selfies.
On the one side there are the traditionalists who still actually ask other people to take photos of them on holiday.
Then there are the super-fans – and we ALL know one – who know exactly which filter and which angle captures them at their best and fill up your feed with their self-portraits,
Unfortunately, there’s some very bad news for them – and it’s been backed up by scientific research.
According to a study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science , lovers of taking a selfie are not only seen as narcissistic – but they apparently also have a distorted view of their own attractiveness.
The death toll for selfies?
The research looked at the perceptions of both selfie and non-selfie takers.
Working on the basis that “people often perceive themselves as more attractive and likable than others do,” it examined people’s “self-favouring biases”.
The perceptions of images of both selfie-takers and non-selfie-takers were analysed and then compared against the perceptions of other, external people.
But if you loathe a selfie, don’t get too smug just yet
Both camps were found to have equal levels of narcissism.
But as the study goes on to say, “we found selfie-takers perceived themselves as more attractive and likable in their selfies than in others’ photos, but that non-selfie-takers viewed both photos similarly.”
And in a final blow, external judges rated the selfie-takers as being less attractive, likeable and more narcissistic.
However, while this is genuinely interesting and insightful, we suspect it’ll take a lot more to stop the selfie juggernaut.