Breaking news! More people have died in the past year from taking selfies than from shark attacks. It seems that the art of taking a selfie is not only self-obsessive — it’s also fatal. Alas, this rise in deaths corresponds to a popular trend in the world today. It is estimated that the average millennial could take up to 25,000 selfies in a lifetime. Today, more and more Americans are wrapped up in a behavior cycle that encourages self-centeredness, and it’s leading us away from so many of the practices that moved our species forward to what it is today.

Let’s first set up the background by starting with something we all have in common. Most Americans have grown up with the following philosophy drummed into their heads: “In my country, I have the right to be an individual. I have the right to make my own choices. Why? Because this is a free nation.” While that isn’t necessarily false, our generation today has taken that to a new extreme. We have grown so calloused to others that we only care about what we believe will be beneficial to ourselves. As I mentioned earlier, more people have died in the past year from selfies than from shark attacks. Named Word of the Year in 2013 by the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “selfie” is a familiar one that has an entrenched place in most millennials’ vocabulary. But what is the motivation for taking so many selfies? Dr. Terri Apter, a psychology lecturer at Cambridge University, says selfies are about people trying to figure out who they are and broadcasting this to other people. Dr. Apter adds, “We like the idea of controlling our image and getting noticed.”

In today’s society, getting noticed primarily happens through posting on social media. As social media grows in popularity, so does the payoff for multiple posts. According to a study titled, “Is Facebook Linked to Selfishness?” by the University of North Florida, Professor Konrath explains that when examining changes in the empathy levels in college students from 1979 to 2009, they found a “significant decrease in empathetic concern and perspective taking, which coincides with the rise in social networking sites.” In other words, increasing levels of participation in the platforms encourages “me” behavior while desensitizing us and decreasing our levels of empathy for the posted crosses that other people have to bear. It’s no wonder that we find it increasingly difficult to be convinced to volunteer at the homeless shelter or even spare a glance at the disabled veteran sitting on a street corner. We have been lulled into thinking into thinking that if it doesn’t benefit us, it can’t possibly be that important. Why else would we spend so much time posting what we ate for lunch or who we’re hanging out with? Social media platforms give us a chance to create a page only about ourselves. This false sense of independence and control only adds to the prodigious advance of selfishness in our society.

Thus, we must now ask a very important question: If we are only about ourselves, then who will tend to society? To answer this question, we can take a look at some of the results from today’s ongoing psychological egoism. The Bystander Effect, for example, is when the presence of other people discourages an individual from acting in an emergency situation. One example takes place in November of 2014, when 58-year-old Ki Suk Han was killed in the New York City subways. It was reported that he was engaged in a verbal argument with 30-year-old Naeem Davis, who then pushed Han onto the railroad tracks. Less than a minute later, as Han struggled to get back on the platform, the subway train hit his body and he was pronounced dead the next morning. The story itself is horrifying but what makes it worse was the fact that not a single person tried to help save this man’s life. In fact, the only supposed witness to action was a freelance photographer who captured pictures of Han desperately trying to get to safety. This picture was later sold to the New York Times, who then published it on the front page under the headline ‘DOOMED.' Now, you may be thinking that there is no way that you yourself could act that way. No matter how selfish we are, we’re still moral, right? However, that’s exactly what the Bystander Effect is. We believe we would act accordingly in a dangerous situation, but if other people are doing nothing to help, we gradually grow hesitant in our need to help. We tell ourselves that our neighbors’ inaction means our assistance is not required. Plus, why stand out from the crowd, right? What if we get pushed too?

The cautionary tale of the Bystander Effect thus brings us to a separate but linked question: If we live only for ourselves, who will be there for us when our illusion of self-sufficiency comes crashing to the floor? Our excitement about our individuality has led us down a path where we act as if we can live as completely autonomous beings. However, as poet John Donne eloquently stated, “No man is an island,” meaning that even the strongest men must rely and depend on others for their survival. We see this illustrated in an everyday scenario. You can be the smartest, fastest, tallest, most muscular person in the world, and still be unable to put out a forest fire yourself. Which is why they came up with this thing called the fire department, where a collective group of firemen works together for the betterment of society.

In addition, great art and literature require the oxygen of empathetic humanism, which is the opposite of self-absorption. The great masterpieces are often juxtapositions of different customs and values. True art has a sense of universality, which makes it enables very different and distant audiences to relate. Take, for example, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Wilde sets out a universal theme of the dangers of, wait for it, selfishness by dramatizing the lives of the Victorian elite in the 19th century. By exposing the ugly ethic of self-absorption, Wilde strikes a universal chord of condemnation against the egotism which resonates with readers worldwide. However, if Wilde had chosen to focus only on the particulars of that society, then there would not be any broader wisdom to depart to the rest of the world. Because he wasn’t purely insular he could provide something that the whole world could benefit from. Had he been insular, then the novel would only be relevant to that inner circle, which would have lead to the dismissal of his art.

So, it is time to see what is needed to address our problems. Don’t worry; it won’t include deleting Facebook. One: I propose that we make community service an ingrown part of our lives, starting from high school. Just like how we make math, English, and science a requirement for graduation, community service should be treated as an essential part of our lives, such that we cannot go off to college without apprenticeship in the service of others. Without this service, we are not prepared to become worthwhile adults in the world. The sooner we recognize that giving back is essential to meaningful living, the sooner we can start dialing down the self-absorption that has led us down this path.

Two: We must let the practice of paying forward convince us of the benefit derived from giving. Humans these days rarely do things without incentive. The more we encourage our children to serve food to the homeless during Thanksgiving, the more we bake in the normality of contributing into society, the more we will figure out how good it feels to volunteer. We would stop avoiding it like the plague and actually seek it out to recapture that level of contentment again. A prime example is a concept known as “Pay it Forward." This approach initiates a chain of people sending goodness into the world, instead of waiting for it to come to them. This has a domino effect, which is an exponential improvement on the payback model we currently depend on.

Three: We need to understand that the choice to self-obsess is an act of devolution, not evolution. Trying to ‘lone wolf’ everything works against the best practices we have learned to this point. That is to say, anthropologists have theorized that one of the reasons the human species advanced so quickly was through the virtue of collective knowledge shared through speech. This means that we used our unique ability to speak to share which tree yielded the sweetest fruit, which gorge would result in certain death. This evolutionary advantage rode principally on our willingness and interest to share..to think beyond ourselves... to grow the unit, instead of hoard our blessings. This is why stepping away from this ideal is completely anti-evolutionary. We will be the end products of our slivers of knowledge, versus drawing from the fount of knowledge that our collectivity embodies. We defeat ourselves and we weaken the benefit for the whole, which is completely counterproductive.

So, alright, I’ll admit I’ve taken quite a selfie or two myself. I am, after all, part of this “me” generation. But, it is important not to conflate an indulgent trip to Disneyland with the decision to actually live there. Neither our society’s security nor art nor the potential for advancement stand to benefit if all of us opt to figure out our existential challenges and fascinations exclusively on our own. To step away from the benefits of collectivity is to swear off the means by which we have reached the lofty perch we now occupy as a species. Does that sound like an overstatement?If we consider Robert Kennedy’s argument that the aggregate effect of small acts of kindness lead to a powerful ripple effect, then the same must also hold true for the inverse. If we all think that we are being personally selfish without harming anyone, the ripple effect is to cheat our collective of the brilliance that is only possible through a united effort. We can choose to think that no harm comes from our individual decisions. However, that choice runs counter to the eons of incomparable progress. We would be cheapening the inherited experience for our children and future generations. And ironically, that would make all our current adventures in selfishness pale in comparison. So, let’s give the selfie stick a rest and turn the camera on the plight of others, so we can get the ripple effect going in the proper direction. Smile!