You found the addicts to narcissistic selfies? It could be that much worse!

It is this (bad) habit of taking one's own photo - sometimes dozens of times a day - using his smartphone that the Janarthanan Balakrishnan Indian and the British Mark D. Griffith, two researchers , were interested in the needs of a study in India. A country that has not been chosen at random since it holds the world record of Facebook users (180 million in 2017), as well as the record, not very glorious, the number of deaths caused by the taking of selfies.

Published in the very serious journal "International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction", she argues that this photographic trend, when it is practiced excessively, could be a mental disorder.

Three levels of addiction to established selfies

For the purposes of this study, the researchers interviewed a panel of 400 Indian students with the "Selfitis Behavior Scale".

The latter had to express their feelings in relation to twenty statements given ("When I do not take selfies, I feel detached from my social group", "Taking more selfies improves my mood and makes me feel happy" ... ) by evaluating them on a scale from 1 to 5. The number 1 means that the subject did not feel concerned by it and the 5 expressing a total agreement.

Thanks to the information gathered, the scientists were able to establish three levels of addiction :

  • "Borderline": we take pictures of ourselves at least three times a day, but we do not publish them on social networks.

  • "Limit": we take at least three selfies a day and publish them.

  • "Chronic": we publish about six selfies a day to respond to an irrepressible desire.

Good news: if you do not recognize yourself in any of these three categories, then you are not concerned with selfhood!

"Selfite", a disease already known

According to the American Psychiatric Association, self-indignation is "the obsessive and compulsive desire to take self-pictures and display them on social media to compensate for lack of self-esteem." and fill a gap in intimacy. "

The first appearance of this term dates from 2014. At the time, the American news site Snopes relayed the information that the American Psychiatric Association considered addiction to selfies as a behavioral disorder.

Information that was totally false at the time, but which nevertheless had the merit of highlighting this phenomenon. The article nevertheless raised questions with the researchers who finally studied the question seriously. A hoax that has finally turned into proven facts.

* https: //link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11469-017-9844-x.pdf