Believe in your Selfie? Selfie Obsession and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

The medical experts have related taking selfies with mental illness. They suggested that taking a lot of selfies and striving for the perfect angle from which to portray themselves are not an addiction but a symptom of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) or might in some cases be ill. However, with the rise of smart phones and social media, it has led to ‘selfies’ becoming a common and cool thing for the young people to do. Many of the celebrities and supermodels are known for taking selfies to show off their luxurious lifestyle and how great they look in sexy bikini and clothing.

A UK psychiatrist who specialise in Body Dysmorphic Disorder states that BDD patients are obsessively taking photos of themselves to check their appearance for defects. With the advancement in new technology like our smartphones, taking a selfie is a new way for the patients to check their appearance. He says that 67% of his BDD patients are repeatedly taking and posting selfies on social media sites. Some of them even attempted to end their precious lives in the trend for ‘selfies’…

The most significant stories can be seen from the people felt completely suicidal because they failed to pursue the ‘perfect selfies’. According to Wikipedia’s entry on the selfie, a man diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder recounted spending ten hours a day attempting to take the ‘perfect’ selfie, attempting suicide after failing to pursue what he perceived to be the perfect selfie. Furthermore, a 19 years old British teenager was obsessed with taking selfies and would post 200 selfies per day to different social media sites. He developed this habit when he was 15 and caused him to drop out of school and lose huge amount of weight. He didn’t leave his house for 6 months and became suicidal that he attempted to end his life with an overdose of pills when he felt like he had failed in taking the perfect selfie. It all began in 2011 after he was turned down by a modeling agency. He became more depressed because he was unsatisfied with his appearance in the selfies he took that he failed to pursue a ‘perfect’ portrait.

It is just frightening for the BDD patients to commit suicide in failing to get the perfect selfie. They lost their friends, families, education, health and most of their lifetime. According to Dr Pamela Rutledge, ‘preoccupation with selfies can be a visible indicator of a young person with a lack of confidence or sense of self that might make him or her a victim of other problems as well.’

While these are some extreme case, they aren’t too far off from what go through many of the minds of young and even older people as they take pictures of themselves for social media. Seeing the images of other people and the attention they may get, we end up comparing ourselves to others. Overtime, an obsession builds and penetrates into our perceptions that appearance is increasingly more important to us. Something I feel we should be focusing less and less on versus more and more. Narcissism, being obsessed to receive gratification and recognition from ones looks, vanity and in an egotistic manner has become a big problem in our digital age. The more ‘likes’ we get on social media sites the happier we feel? Grounding our happiness on our or selfie or profile picture performance?