Blog post #3: The risk and dangers of Selfie

In today's generation, everyone wants to be accepted as who they really are, but everything changed when selfie came up. Now teenagers are being more conscious about their look on the outside not on the inside because for them social survival is one of the solutions in getting friends and not getting rejected by their peers, but why they don't know is that they are more rejected by people not only in their school but by the whole community.

According to an article in telegraph.co.uk by Rosa Silverman entitled " 'Selfie' photographs trend 'puts children at risk of abuse' " she said that many of the teenagers nowadays post their pictures in social networking sites to bid for approval from their peers so that they can feel that they are already accepted just by getting a like from the picture they posted, an expert said that children today are developing an 'inappropriate self awareness at a much earlier age.' They post pictures of themselves for approval but they are more vulnerable to cyber bullying and abuse. The mindset of the people nowadays is very weird because they think that posting  a selfie is a competition for them, they like to compare themselves  to other who garnered more likes than them and if they don't get the number of likes they wanted, they see that as an embarrassment for them and think that they are not popular and some other people develop eating disorders just to make themselves look 'perfect' on their selfie, which is for me not a very good habit they are just destroying themselves and their body just to be accepted by people.

This article interests me because I was shocked of what I have read in this article. I didn't know that this selfie mayhem has gone haywire and the people too. They've lost their control and they let their desires of being accepted rule over their minds it's like they are being mind controlled and tells them to always look perfect on your photos and compete with other people and they even developed eating disorders jut because they want to look like or look even better than people.

Rosa Silverman said in her article, "Social media sites have come under scrutiny recently following the suicide of 14 year-old Hannah Smith after she was targeted by trolls on the social networking site Ask.fm."

This quote that I've read from the article is very alarming, and I hope people would stop for a moment and think of the things that they think is not very healthy for them anymore specially in taking selfies. They should start giving more concern on their health instead of their appearance in the pictures, they might not know that they are already have eating disorder just because they want to look good in their selfies and not only they can develop eating disorders but they are very vulnerable to cyber bullying too which can highly affect their confidence level and receive negative comments which can result to suicidal attempts. I hope people would realize that now before it's too late.

Some people say that selfies can be constructive and destructive at the same. In my own opinion, yes it can be constructive in a way that you get to build up your confidence through social media but it can also be destructive once it goes overboard.

According to an article by Dee Dee Gatton in kval.com entitled " 'Selfie' destructive? 'It puts an emphasis on one facet of their lives."  she said that not only the teenagers get to be affected this self-portrait phenomenon, even then toddlers and young children too it has a high impact on the child's ability to fulfill happiness through goals and desires. Parents should not teach children to take selfies because it is only natural for children to be curious on how they look and take pictures of their children interacting with other people personally not through the use of internet. A ninth-grader said that it is a competition today on who gets the most followers and has the most likes on their pictures but Dr. Jana Mohr-Lone said that it is only natural for adolescents to explore themselves and think of a way to express themselves because in the adolescent stage, she said,  the questions 'Who am I?' or "How do others see me?' starts, they are not just showing how they actually look, but they also convey a message through reactions and feelings that ,sometimes, words can't tell.

Dee Dee Gatton said in her article, "A lot of teenagers and young adults seem to be obsessed with taking pictures of themselves to post on Instagram and Facebook. Some experts say, it doesn't mean they're narcissistic or vain - in fact, it's perfectly normal."

This quotes somehow altered my way of thinking how selfie really affected and can affect people. Now I know that why some of the pictures in the internet mostly contains teenagers, they want to explore themselves through the use of modern technology and maybe they are afraid to express themselves in other ways of self-expression that's why they chose selfie and some researchers say that it is not a form of narcissism or vanity for teenagers, but is perfectly normal for them to do these kind of things.

This article interests me because at some point it made me think how selfie can affect every individual from toddlers to adults. There is always an explanation for everything we just need to dig thoroughly for us to know the truth behind these questions.

In my own opinion, selfie does have a good effect on some people, specially those of the teenagers, we misunderstood them by judging them immediately and by labeling them narcissistic and vain just because they posted a picture of themselves and they just wanted to express themselves and that's the way they chose to express themselves.