In March 2014, the Pew Research Center (a Washington-based research institute that provides information on social issues) announced that more than a quarter of Americans had shared a selfie online. It's also not surprising that the practice of taking self-photographs and sharing them on social media is more common among Millennials (those born between the 80s and 2000, approximately). Of this group, more than one in two has shared a selfie, while "only" one in four Generation Xers (those born between 1960 and the early 80s) has shared one.
This practice has now become global and commonplace. Evidence of its mainstream nature is evident in other aspects of our culture. In 2013, the word “selfie” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary , but it was also named Word of the Year. Since the end of January 2014, the Chainsmokers ' music video for “#Selfie” has been viewed over 250 million times on YouTube. Selfie queen Kim Kardashian published a book-length collection of her self-portraits in print, titled Selfish , in 2015. This begs the question: how did selfies become so widespread? From a sociological perspective, there are several explanations for this.
Technologies force us
Simply put, physical and digital technology make it possible, so we do it. The idea that technological structures, the social world, and our lives are intimately connected is a sociological argument as old as Marx , and has been repeatedly explored by theorists and researchers who have studied and traced the evolution of communication technologies. Artists have created self-portraits for millennia, from paintings to photographs. What's new about a selfie? Technological progress has liberated the self-portrait from the world of art and brought it to the masses.
Now, these digital technologies that enable the act of taking a selfie are a form of technological rationality, a term coined by critical theorist Herbert Marcuse in his book One-Dimensional Man . Technologies exert their own rationality that shapes our lives. Digital photography, front-facing cameras, social media platforms, and wireless communications generate a set of expectations and norms that infuse our culture. We can do it, and therefore we do it, but at the same time, we also do it because our culture expects it of us.
Identities have gone digital
We are not isolated beings; we are social beings living in societies, and as such, our lives are essentially characterized by social relationships with other people, institutions, and social structures. As photos intended to be shared, selfies are not individual social acts . This, and everything related to social media in general, are part of what sociologists David Snow and Leon Anderson describe as " identity work ," that is, all those actions we take daily to appear to others as we wish to be seen. Far from being strictly innate processes, the creation and expression of identity have long been interpreted by sociologists as a social process. The selfies we take and share are designed to present a particular image of ourselves and, consequently, to shape the impression others have of us.
The famous sociologist Erving Goffman, in his book " Everyday Life as Performance, " describes this as a process of " impression management ." This concept refers to the idea of what others expect of us and, consequently, our desire to make a good impression on others.
The meme forces us
In his book " The Selfish Gene ," evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins provided a definition of the meme that has become extremely important for sociology, communication sciences, and cultural studies . Dawkins described the meme as a basic unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, the basic unit of biological evolution, based on the idea that the mechanisms of replication, mutation, and selection also occur in the cultural sphere. Nowadays, memes abound on the Internet (often used in a joking manner) and have become a veritable form of communication through major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
These are densely charged with symbolic meaning and therefore replicate rapidly. In this sense, the selfie could be defined as the meme par excellence; currently, the selfie is both a cultural construct and a form of communication that has become widespread in our daily lives, thus taking on an increasingly important social significance.
Rino Carfora
