According to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary,
selfie: an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks.
Over the last 10 years, the term selfie and its practice have been a huge trend all over social media. Our generation specifically obsesses over taking selfies. We thrive on posting various selfies wearing designer or nice outfits in attempts to look "care free," "natural," as if to suggest the photo was "spontaneous." But in reality, more often than not, we overly pose to create an image of ourselves that was anything but “spontaneous.” The entire process of taking a selfie, from capturing an image of ourselves "worthy of peers to view" to actually hitting “post” on any social media account, is one that would even rattle a brain surgeon; between choosing the perfect pose and making sure our outfit looks good to then picking one of the many dreaded filters to top off the perfect selfie.
How often have we found ourselves asking our friends to “take a flick of us,” or “take an off-guard right quick” whenever we are out with them. Then proceeding to pick the perfect photo to post and forgetting to actually spend time and enjoy the moment. All too often we find ourselves wanting to post about an event and how great it is, instead of actually enjoying it.
Many would argue that selfies boost self esteem and represent an individual's self expression and creativity. Whereas others believe selfies feed our generation by providing misconceptions and false ideas of "perfection" that younger people will ultimately strive for, and fail. I personally see both sides to the debate. I've fallen victim to the unattainable selfies that flood the media which have affected my ideas of beauty and cause me to question my self worth. The idea of being "Twitter famous" or "Instagram famous" based on one's self is very appealing, yet also very scary at the same time. If someone allows their self worth to be determined by how many favorites or likes they get on a selfie, then aren't they relinquishing their freedom and appearance to the masses? Our generation has already owned being the "social media savvy generation," with that said are we letting this hinder our freedoms of expression or is it empowering us? You decide - before hitting post are you actually letting you speak for yourself, or are you letting the societal expectations around you tell your story?
