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Psychologists claim that taking three or more selfies a day could be a sign of mental illness.
In 2014, a spoof news article coined the term "selfitis," saying that the American Psychiatric Association was going to start recognising it as a real disorder.
Three years on, two researchers have looked at the term and have decided there could be some truth to it.
Psychologists Mark D. Griffiths and Janarthanan Balakrishnan have published a paper in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, in which they argue that selfitis is a real condition, and can be diagnosed as excessive selfie taking.
They also developed a "Selfitis Behaviour Scale" by surveying the selfie behaviour of 400 participants from India. The scale assesses the severity of the condition, of which there are three levels.
India was chosen for the study as the country has the most selfie-related deaths. Out of 127 selfie-related deaths that have been reported worldwide between March 2014 and September 2016, 76 occurred in India.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:18PM (1 child)
An interesting component here is that if the unusual activity was confined to someone's intrusive thoughts (only being pleased with parallel or perpendicular lines but never with lines intersecting at any other angle, for example), or someone's actions that are more private (repeated cleaning of certain places in their home, compulsively organizing their bottlecaps, etc.), then enough info about a person's condition and activities might never be known to diagnose anything out of the ordinary.
Take that same person and make them able to focus on something that is frequently published to international media (facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, myspace, geocities), and suddenly much more information is available.
Thus same person, same tendencies, different level of knowledge: Without their published selfies, we wouldn't know.
It's not like all the clinicians chased people down looking for selfies, either; they were basically minding their own business and the selfiers began publishing more photos, of themselves, than had previously ever been taken in history, making themselves and their own behavior known. The clinicians could either pretend to not know, or could notice "oh yeah, I see that." Many of the honest ones seem to have chosen the latter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:10AM
Except the private OCD individual wishes to remain private (along with their admirably symmetrical bottle cap arrangements). One of the primary symptoms of the selfie addict is the publishing of as much information about themselves as possible.
The internet and social media has allowed people to feel as though they are putting on a show for the world, and that the world is watching. It has turned the local soapbox into a megaphone that can be heard near and far. It provides personality types that want, need or crave attention a much more accessible means of seeking that attention.
You are reading this post only because I felt the need to post/share/publish my opinion in response to your need to do the same. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to rearrange my DVD collection based on the number of letters that appear above and including the title. Tie breakers are decided by the number of vowels.