With selfies possibly being the online trademark, as well as a falsely conceived show of self appreciation, a study has revealed that most of the people fond of taking and posting selfies are more prone to low self esteem.
The study published last year by Jennifer Mills, an associate professor at York University, asked female undergraduates to take a selfie on an iPad and upload it to either Facebook or Instagram.
One group could only take a single picture and upload it without editing, but the other had a chance to take as many as they wanted and retouch their selfie using an app.
Mills and her colleagues found that all the selfie takers felt less attractive and less confident after posting than when they’d walked into the experiment. Even those who’d been allowed to edit their photos to their heart’s content.
“Even though they can make the end result look ‘better’, they still are focused on aspects of what they don’t like about the way they look,” she says.
Some of the participants wanted to know if anyone had liked their photo before deciding how they felt about having posted it, although looking at interactions wasn’t part of the study.
“There’s this rollercoaster of feeling anxious and then getting reassurance from other people that you look good,” says Mills. “But that probably doesn’t last forever, and then you take another selfie.”
In previous work published in 2017, researchers found that spending a lot of time perfecting selfies could be a sign that someone is struggling with body dissatisfaction.
Still, some big holes remain in the research on social media and body image.
Most of the work so far has focused on young women, as traditionally they have been the age group most affected by body image concerns.
But research including men is starting to show they’re not immune. For example, a study found that men who reported looking at male fitness content more frequently said they compared their own appearance to others more often and cared about having muscles more.