Are you a Selfie Lover? If yes, then you may be suffering from Selfitis:
Selfitis a mental disorder related to clicking too many selfies, earlier the term was used for the first time in a fake news story. Researchers reached the conclusion that people who are in habit of clicking selfies do this to boost their confidence or their mood, along with other motivations like conforming and social competition.
Everybody’s guilty of clicking a selfie or two. How else would you announce to the world about your brand new haircut or the fun you had at your birthday?
But you know you have a problem when your urge to click pictures of yourself is uncontrollable. Psychologists have termed this obsession with selfies as ‘Selfitis’ in a paper published in 2017.
According to the study, the psychologists and researchers concluded that people who are in habit of clicking selfies do this to boost their confidence or their mood, along with other motivations like conforming and social competition.
The researchers also concluded that the above disorder points that one can be suffering from a low self-confidence, addictive behavior and other mental issues.
A group of 200 individuals were studied in order to reach this conclusion. The research also points in the direction of Internet addiction.
In the sample size, 34% had borderline selfitis, 40.5% acute and 25.5% chronic. The obsessive selfie-taking was more likely to hit males at 57.5% compared to 42.5 for females. Less surprisingly, the 16-to-20-year-old age group, the youngest in the study, was also the most susceptible. Nine percent took more than eight selfies a day while about 25% shared at least three images on social media every day.
“Typically, those with the condition suffer from a lack of self-confidence and are seeking to ‘fit in’ with those around them and may display symptoms similar to other potentially addictive behaviours,” Dr. Janarthanan Balakrishnan told the New York Post.
“Now the existence of the condition appears to have been confirmed, it is hoped that further research will be carried out to understand more about how and why people develop this potentially obsessive behavior and what can be done to help people who are the most affected.”