Collage of various social media sites. Photo from WikiMedia.
Today in society, the millennial and older generation gets more and more fascinated with the obsession of the usage of social media such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. Whether it’s showcasing high quality photos, inspirational quotes or just selfies of yourself, one thing for sure is that this specific trend won’t die out.
Scientific studies showed that people engaged in social media develop self-proclaimed and narcissistic characteristics. For example, the psychology researchers at the University of Georgia conducted a research involving around 13,000 students. They came to a conclusion that “narcissism has a modest, but reliable positive relationship with a range of social media behaviors.”
They also found that two other strains of behaviors. Grandiose narcissism is a type of narcissism that relates to the frequency of updating and posting selfies to their followers. Then there’s vulnerable narcissism, which ties to people with insecurities that spent little time on social media.
In my opinion, I believe celebrities play a huge role in it because of their influences on young people. Their ambushed photos that garner a lot of likes and followers, reaching millions, which often creates insecurities and a mentality to create or at least attempt, to have a lifestyle like them.
Also, I feel like there is a small misconception with it; maybe people like to post selfies because they feel that they receive a kind of self-confidence that they never had before, yet they are often mistaken. In reality, the usage of social media really depends on what the individual wants to do. On a more positive light, the main concept of social media is to express yourself or maybe tell a story through your photos.
Dr. Keith Campbell, co-author of the “The Narcissism Epidemic,” noted that when individuals engaged with social media they “will be engaging with more narcissism than might really exist in the world. This might distort your view of the world as being more narcissistic than it is.”
Ciaran McMahon, a director at the Institute of Cyber Security believes that there could be “a wider cultural increase in narcissism in the west that’s then reflected back in social media.” So, for social media to have such popularity means that narcissism must have existed back then.
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