Rise of selfies

Hold your smartphone at a perfect angle, select the filter, put on your best pose ... and click!

Capturing a selfie is a piece of cake, isn’t it?

The art of taking selfies is probably the only art that almost the entire world has mastered. It has gained lots of practitioners in recent years.

Seriously, lots...

On Instagram alone, more than 30 million posts are just selfies. From celebrities to national leaders to regular folks - everyone is fond of selfies.

So, it didn’t come to me as a surprise that “Selfie” was declared the 2013 Word of the Year by the Oxford Dictionaries. But despite its popularity, selfies leave both positive and negative impact on its fans.

It has been observed that selfies boost self-confidence. However, they might even lead to narcissistic tendencies.

Selfies have the potential to improve our self-esteem. But, we should watch out for associating our self-confidence with the positive comments and “likes” that we earn upon posting selfies on social networking sites.

Some believe that selfies help teenagers develop their own identity. But don’t you think that the process of clicking and uploading selfies, which were meant to be casually taken photographs, becomes an addiction for teens, thanks to various social media apps?

I don’t know whether a selfie creates an identity, but it can take someone’s life.

Danny Bowman was one of the victims of this craze. The selfie-obsessed teenager almost committed suicide. Thankfully, his mother got there on time.

He was depressed. But, why? He could not get a perfect selfie after having spent 10 hours. Reportedly, he used to click 200 selfies every day. Mamma mia!

Often, people become oblivious to their surroundings while clicking selfies. A girl fell off a cliff into the sea while taking selfies in Mumbai. Selfies even caused several holiday-makers to fall at the popular Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Like everything in life, selfies too have their own pros and cons. So, indulge in some selfie fun, but be on your guard against its adverse effects.

I must confess that I take one or two selfies once in a while. Still I’m not a “SelfiNatic!”

(Published in The Gulf Today on September 17, 2016)