The Selfitis Hoax: Taking Selfies Is Not A Mental Disorder
Attention:
Social networks have recently spread false information : The APA, it was said, had included a disorder called “Selfitis” which referred to the obsession with taking selfies with the mobile phone. Although it is true that there are people who become too obsessed with wanting to show a good image of themselves on the networks, the truth is that There has been no mention of this supposed disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.
In order to do pedagogy on this issue, we have compiled the article “hoax” that has been the subject of so much attention and controversy.
Have you ever stopped to think What does your profile photo mean? FacebookTwitter, Instagram ? What’s the point of uploading all those self-portraits daily to your social networks?
From people with a normal life to celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Kelly Brooks, Lana del Rey and Kim Kardashian upload daily photos and self-portraits of their daily lives. Many will think that these self-portraits have no meaning, but according to the American Psychiatric Association (better known by its acronym in English APA) during its annual meeting, held in Chicago in 2014, people who compulsively take selfies can suffer from a mental disorder called “Selfitis”, and according to APA this compulsive act of taking self-portraits occurs due to a lack of self-esteem and to fill a void in privacy.
In 2013, Nadav Hochman, Lev Manovich and Jay Chow analyzed two million photos from the social network instagramwhich were collected in five different cities around the world. The analysis of these photos yielded relevant information, such as that Females between the ages of 23 and 25 take the most selfies. Another curious fact is that women in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo are the ones who smile the most and turn their heads an average of 16.9 degrees when taking a self-portrait, when the average for all countries does not exceed 12 degrees. As we can see, it was a study of exhaustiveness almost to the point of absurdity.
But this does not mean that men are exempt from suffering from this disorder, since there is a good percentage of men who compulsively take this type of self-portraits.
An investigation carried out by psychologists revealed other revealing data about Selfitis. For example, it was learned that the more selfies a person takes and spreads on social media, the more damaged their relationship with their social media friends tends to be. Therefore, we can conclude that People who believe that by taking dozens and dozens of selfies and uploading them to social networks they will achieve more popularity and friendships are wrong.
How to identify a person with Selfitis?
To diagnose a person with Selfitis, it is not only taken into account that a person takes a selfie. Taking a self-portrait from time to time is not any kind of sign that you suffer from a pathology. For us to be able to talk about Selfitis, the number of selfies must be significant during the day, pBut the compulsion to share said photos on their social networks is also taken into account.
A person with Selfitis can take more than three self-portraits per day and share the same photo more than twice on different social networks such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Also identifying the disorder is the fact that you copy poses of people who have had a lot of social impact in their photos, and you can present anxiety and depression if your selfie did not get the right results. like expected.
The phases of Selfitis
According to the APAThere are 3 stages or phases of Selfitis, which are as follows:
At the APA annual meeting it was concluded that the best possible treatment for Selfitis is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
A problem that should make us reflect
The underlying problem that we observe with the obsession with selfies is not exactly the smartphone fever, but the image culture. What does it reveal to us when a teenager spends hours taking photos and then showing them on social networks? In many cases, it can indicate poor self-esteem and the need to feel accepted by others.
In this sense, Selfitis is the tip of the iceberg of a problem that is not strictly psychopathological but is related to the values that prevail in our society, a society in which aesthetics and personal relationships acquire a central role in self-image. of the adolescent. Taking selfies does not necessarily mean that there is a psychological problem behind it but in some cases it can be an unequivocal symptom that something is not quite right.
