Let Me Take A Selfie: Narcissism Or Self-Expression?

“Let me take a Selfie”: Narcissism or self-expression? In the 21st century, it is undeniable that selfies on social media sites has captured public attention and became such a major part of popular culture, especially among teenagers. In fact, selfie has become an obsession among generation Y and it is still arising problem in Malaysia. Selfies are defined as, “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, normally with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social medias” in Oxford Dictionary. In this era, selfies are known as creative way of self-expression and a new way of communicating with others via images. The most common reason for the act of taking and posting selfies are to keep their friends and family up to date on their lives, for
Narcissism is “typically illustrated as affinity to believe one’s self to be superior over others, to incessantly pursue adoration from others and to participate in egotistical thinking and behaviour” (Panek, Nardis & Konrath, 2013). Narcissism is linked with selfies because it has been found people who post selfies often shows high narcissistic behaviours. For example, Carpenter (2012) found out that people mainly to post and share their selfies because they believe all of their followers and social friends are genuinely interested about knowing it is a narcissistic behaviour. In addition, Wickel (2015) added that teens post their selfie to social network for the only purpose of getting likes and positive comments from their friends and “teens especially measure their status through the number of likes they get on their selfie” (Wickel, 2015) also shows narcissism
This it is possible through editing and adding filters to images. As such, individuals use selfies as way to inflate their sense of reputation and attractiveness on social media and in which is stated as undeniable behaviour of narcissist (Brown & Zeigler, 2004). Thus, is selfie really a way of self-expression or it is something more than that? We need to determine if selfies are just a common form of self-expression among generation Y or it is related to narcissism because high narcissism cause several problems in an individual such as mental illness, high insecurity and at the same time narcissist tend to be more violent and aggressive after being critiqued or never get enough positive feedback as they expected for themselves (Wickel, 2015). Increase in narcissism level proves to be a potential risk to develop emotional and psychological health (Wickel, 2015). Taken together, the findings from past researches give a better understanding on the act of selfies and even though there are studies claim that selfies are just a form of self-expression, it can be well seen that selfies are actually more linked to