Do you have Selfitis – you can’t stop taking selfies of you or your children?
Chances are you might have “selfitis” — a genuine mental condition that makes a person feel compelled to constantly take photos and post them on social media, psychologists say.
The term has been around since 2014 to describe obsessive selfie-taking but has not been backed by science until now.
Researchers from Nottingham Trent University and Thiagarajar School of Management investigated the term and discovered six motivating factors. Experts have even developed a “Selfitis Behaviour Scale” to assess how badly a person’s condition is.
Why do people feel the need to take endless selfies?
Those who suffer from selfitis are generally seeking to boost their confidence, seek attention, improve their mood, make memories, conform with their social group and be socially competitive.
The scale, which runs from one to 100, was based on a focus group of 200 people.
The focus group was held in India because the country has the highest number of Facebook users and also the highest number of deaths from trying to take a selfie in a dangerous location.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, a professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University, said: “A few years ago, stories appeared in the media claiming that the condition of selfitis was to be classed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.
“Whilst the story was revealed to be a hoax, it didn’t mean that the condition of selfitis didn’t exist.”
The Selfitis Behaviour Scale
“We have now appeared to confirm its existence and developed the world’s first Selfitis Behaviour Scale to assess the condition.”
His colleague Dr. Janarthanan Balakrishnan added: “Typically, those with the condition suffer from a lack of self-confidence and are seeking to ‘fit in’ with those around them and may display symptoms similar to other potentially addictive behaviors.”
“Now the existence of the condition appears to have been confirmed, it is hoped that further research will be carried out to understand more about how and why people develop this potentially obsessive behavior and what can be done to help people who are the most affected.”
Here’s how you can tell if you have ‘selfitis’
Answer the following 10 questions on a scale of one to five, where five is strongly agree and one is strongly disagree.
At the end add up all of your scores.
The higher your score (the highest is 200) the greater the likelihood that you suffer from selfitis.
- Taking selfies gives me a good feeling to better enjoy my environment
- Sharing my selfies creates healthy competition with my friends and colleagues
- I gain enormous attention by sharing my selfies on social media
- I’m able to reduce my stress level by taking selfies
- Taking a selfie makes me feel confident
- Usually I gain more acceptance among my peer group when I take selfies and share them on social media
- I’m able to express myself more in my environment through selfies
- Taking different selfie poses helps increase my social status
- I feel more popular when I post my selfies on social media
- Taking more selfies improves my mood and makes me feel happy
- I become more positive about myself when I take selfies
- I become a strong member of my peer group through selfie postings
- Taking selfies provides better memories about the occasion and the experience
- I post frequent selfies to get more ‘likes’ and comments on social media
- By posting selfies, I expect my friends to appraise me
- Taking selfies instantly modifies my mood
- I take more selfies and look at them privately to increase my confidence
- When I don’t take selfies, I feel detached from my peer group
- I take selfies as trophies for future memories
- I use photo editing tools to enhance my selfie to look better than others
Do you or your child have a digital footprint?
How did you score? If you have children, do you ask their permission before posting photos of them online? Are they are babies, or very young and you write about them or post photos of them online, it means that you’re creating a digital footprint for them. If you do this a lot from when your child is young, it could be quite a huge digital footprint by the time your child gets to the teenage years.
Your child’s digital footprint is part of their online reputation. What you post online about your child can never be fully erased from the internet.
