Surely you have a friend or a friend who spends taking selfies. It’s a lot of fun, but this habit has potential dangers. Without reaching the extreme of people dying to take off “the best photo of their vacation” or to show what they are capable of, several studies have shown that this habit can hide, for example, damage to self-esteem. But selfies can also affect the couple’s relationship and even lead to its end, according to several studies.
Research
Who can resist a selfie? Who says “NO” when invited to a photo? This habit that seems so nice and harmless, could reveal the existence of mental disorders.
In fact, the APA (American Psychiatric Association) has called this disorder “selfitis”. The institution indicated that it occurs at three levels:
– Borderline Selfitis: taking photos of oneself at least three times a day, but without sharing them on social networks.
– Acute Selfitis: taking photos of oneself at least three times a day and posting them all on social networks.
– Chronic Selfitis: taking photos of oneself “without control”. The person takes more than 6 selfies a day and shares them on all their social networks on several occasions. The phenomenon of selfies is intimately associated with the explosive development of social networks. These constitute a great advance in terms of communication and entertainment, but may not be so beneficial for individuals and human relationships, especially the couple.
According to research conducted by the Birmingham Business School in England, people in a relationship don’t feel good when their partner shares too many photos, either of the two of them or just one of them. In addition, when the number of photos shared increases, a couple’s intimacy decreases, according to the researchers. But it is not only intimacy that is affected: in the long term, people do not feel that the photos are true, since they spend a lot of time posing and very little time being themselves.
In the same sense, an investigation was carried out in Chile.
A study led by Daniel Halpern, a specialist in social and digital media and a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of that country, analyzed the relationship between the quality of couple relationships and the tendency or not of their members to hang “selfies” in the photos. social media.
The researchers concluded that selfies do not help strengthen the sentimental bond, for two main reasons. The first: jealousy. By showing intimacy, we not only photograph ourselves, but also portray our daily lives, comments and public interactions and that generates alarm in the person who has not uploaded the image. The work of Halpern and her collaborators showed that jealousy and problems in the couple increase in parallel with the increase in selfies published by one of its members. The second reason why selfies threaten sentimental bonds is based on the data obtained in the work of the Chilean university, but also on recent theories of social psychology, who point out that the individualistic and egocentric use of social networks leads to a considerable increase in narcissism. Parallel to this, when someone creates an ideal image on the Internet, he tends to underestimate his partner in the real world, since the reality of everyday life does not withstand comparison with the fictional world of networks.
and more studies
Selfies affect couple relationships and even lead to breakup. Studies conducted in different parts of the world have had similar conclusions. – A study carried out by researchers from the Ohio State University, in the United States and published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, revealed that the more a person tends to post selfies on social networks, the more predisposed they are to suffer from personality disorders such as narcissism or psychopathy. – A study by Florida State University states that the jealousy that these types of photographs produce can trigger aggression and violence in the couple. For researchers, selfies in which the person shows her body, with provocative poses and very sexy clothes, can cause insecurity in couples, promote excessive jealousy and cause verbal or physical violence, in the most extreme cases. A common result in surveys, in any segment of the population, is that men suffer more sexual jealousy and women, emotional.
– Researchers from Brunel University in London highlighted that sharing couple selfies not only breaks the line of privacy, but also causes disagreements, because many times the other person does not feel comfortable with the photograph, feels exposed or just doesn’t like the way it looks. – In the same study center they also concluded, analyzing 555 Facebook profiles, that users who show a predominance of selfies on their walls, present a certain degree of narcissism, a psychological maladjustment of those people who admire themselves too much. This behavior leads to the rejection of other users of the social network and is explained by the constant need for external reinforcement and attention. To boost your self esteem you need the likes on your photos. Every time the person posts an image of themselves and receives a “like”, they feel as if they are filling an internal void and that leads them to repeat the action. This situation is more evident when these users retouch their portraits before posting them on the social network. – The Independent portal highlighted that the obsession with selfies reduces interaction between people and affects communication, which translates into poor quality relationships and frequent misunderstandings.
Check your relationship with the photos and analyze your posts in the Maybe you are affecting your relationship with your partner without meaning to. If necessary, seek professional help.
