Advantages and Disadvantages of Taking Selfies

With the development of network and social software, taking selfies has recently become a more and more popular behavior among people. Behind the behavior of taking selfies is many psychological factors and it has both advantages and disadvantages.

The first selfie in human history was taken by an American photographer named Robert Cornelius in 1839, when camera was still beyond popularization. In 1900, Kodak launched a cheap ""box Brownie"" camera and cameras began to become popular among people. Nowadays, it is quite a common scene that people take out their phones and use the front cameras of them to take images of themselves.

And Oxford Dictionaries also named 'selfie' word of the year in 2013.

The first advantage of taking selfies is that it is a fine way for people to realize their self recognition. As is universally acknowledged, people are not born to know themselves, and the first self awareness is realized when we look into the mirror and see our images from it. Nowadays, with cameras on smart phones, people are able to take pictures of themselves from time to time, which in a way is beneficial for them to better observe and study themselves.

Besides, taking selfies is actually a marvelous way to convey the information which is inconvenient to express in words. For example, a selfie posted on the Internet can convey the information of where they are, what they are wearing as well as their state of mood.

However, as the old saying goes, every coin has two sides, there are also some disadvantages of taking selfies.

Taking selfies too often may lead to addiction and harm ones self-confidence. According to a news published on The Daily Mail, Danny Bowman, a 19 years old boy, would take 10 selfies of himself before he washed and would even dropped out of class in order to focus on his addiction, at last, he need to had therapy to treat his technology addiction, OCD and Body dimorphic disorder. As a result, it is of vital importance for us to control the number of selfies we take every day so as not to be addicted to it.

Additionally, the desire for taking novel selfiles in order to draw people's attention can actually lead to dangerous behaviors and may even cause death. Xenia Lgnatyeva, a 17-year-old Russian girl, climbed onto the railway bridge in St. Petersburg to take a selfie and fell off. She grabbed an cable when she fell off the bridge in order to keep balance and was therefore killed by an electric shock. And more and more people are doing this kind of dangerous behavior like taking selfies in a very high place in order to draw public's attention. In this way, taking selfies is no longer an advisable pastime.

In a word, we need to regard the behavior of taking selfies as a beneficial tool for us to better socialize with others rather than be controlled by it.

Reference List

1. Llia Blinderman, 2013. See the First ""Selfie"" In History Taken by Robert Cornelius, a Philadelphia Chemist, in 1839 [Online] (updated 23 November 2013) Available at:
2. Danika Fears, 2013. Oxford Dictionaries names 'selfie' word of the year [Online], Updated Nov.19.2013 Available at:
3. https://www.today.com/news/oxford-dictionaries-names-selfie-word-year-2D11603600
4. WILLS ROBINSON, 2014. Selfies almost killed me: Schoolboy who took 200 photos of himself every day because he wanted perfection describes how addiction drove him to attempt suicide [Online]

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