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The Selfie Generation: An Epidemic of Online Narcissism

Searching for sanity in a maelstrom of immature clickbait and humblebrags.

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

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Will we forever remain the Selfie Generation?

I love social media—just not all of it.

I could do without motiv­a­tion­al quotes, bath­room selfies, impossible ping-pong trick shots, wing­tip sun­sets, Instagram teen mod­els, jet-set life­styles with fil­ter packs, keep­ing up with real­ity super­stars, LinkedIn net­work­ing threads, Tik Tok pranks, butt pos­ing in yoga pants, baby pic­tures, MrBeast, Twitch stream­ers speak­ing in baby voices, man-buns mak­ing per­fect cups of cof­fee, rampant Twitter debates, and snap­shots of feet on beaches.

Still:

  • It’s a grow­ing social imbal­ance of loneli­ness. Influencers are in your social circles, but you’re not in theirs.

Will we fig­ure out what it means to be grownups in social media?
Or will we remain infant­il­ised kidults?

Here we go:

The Selfie Generation

Take a selfie, fake a life - The Selfie Generation
The Selfie Generation: Take a selfie, fake a life.
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The Selfie Generation

I turned 30 in 2009 and spent the fol­low­ing dec­ade exper­i­en­cing a social media uni­verse dom­in­ated by teens and 20-somethings. Sure, new trends are excit­ing, but still.

I’ve loathed see­ing oth­er­wise mature, intel­li­gent, middle-aged friends do duck­face selfies in front of their bath­room mir­rors — or weirdly flex­ing about their latest triath­lon train­ing ses­sion. 1Silfwer, J. (2021, August 10). Online Wannabeism: Why We Mimic Social Media Influencers. Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​o​n​l​i​n​e​-​w​a​n​n​a​b​e​i​sm/

Being young today is no longer a trans­it­ory stage, but rather a life choice, well estab­lished and bru­tally pro­moted by the media sys­tem. While the clas­sic paradigms of adult­hood and mat­ur­a­tion could inter­pret such infant­ile beha­vi­or as a symp­tom of devi­ance, such beha­vi­or has become a mod­el to fol­low, an ideal of fun and being care­free, present in a wide vari­ety of con­texts of soci­ety. The con­tem­por­ary adult fol­lows a sort of thought­ful imma­tur­ity, a con­scious escape from the respons­ib­il­it­ies of an ana­chron­ist­ic mod­el of life. If an ideal of matur­ity remains, it does not find beha­vi­or­al com­pens­a­tions in a soci­ety where child­ish atti­tudes and adoles­cent life mod­els are con­stantly pro­moted by the media and tol­er­ated by insti­tu­tions.”
Source: ResearchGate 2Bernardini, J. (2014, June 30). The Infantilization of the Postmodern Adult and the Figure of Kidult. ResearchGate. … Continue read­ing

Some take the route of being omni­po­tent multi-experts who are fiercely opin­ion­ated about everything. Others try to save the world by organ­ising them­selves around the cent­ral task of sham­ing oth­ers pub­licly. Some try too hard to impress oth­ers by self-pro­mot­ing their per­son­al life choices. 3Silfwer, J. (2022, September 6). Social Media — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​o​c​i​a​l​-​m​e​d​ia/

Others opt out. Some of us cen­sor ourselves in fear of social isol­a­tion, opin­ion cor­ridors, and mighty echo cham­bers. 4Silfwer, J. (2023, December 15). Echo Chambers: Algorithmic Confirmation Bias. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​e​c​h​o​-​c​h​a​m​b​e​rs/ 5Silfwer, J. (2020, June 4). The Spiral of Silence. Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​p​i​r​a​l​-​o​f​-​s​i​l​e​n​ce/

A status update with no likes (or a clev­er tweet without retweets) becomes the equi­val­ent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewrit­ten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to con­form to the opin­ions of those around us.”
— Neil Strauss, Wall Street Journal

We resort to click­bait, humble brag­ging, and vir­tue sig­nalling in our des­per­ate search for likes. 6Silfwer, J. (2023, November 22). The Anatomy of Attention. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​a​t​t​e​n​t​i​on/

We’re a gen­er­a­tion of adults who don’t know what it means to be grownups on social media.

To me, it’s just one symp­tom of a broad­er trend of infant­il­isa­tion in Western cul­ture. It began before the advent of smart­phones and social media. But, as I argue in my book “The Terminal Self,” our every­day inter­ac­tions with these com­puter tech­no­lo­gies have accel­er­ated and nor­m­al­ised our culture’s infant­ile tend­en­cies.”
Simon Gottschalk, pro­fess­or of Sociology at the University of Nevada

But it’s nev­er too late to be a grownup in social media:

  • Cultivate mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions. Use social media to estab­lish and main­tain genu­ine rela­tion­ships with people that mat­ter to you.
  • Practice explor­at­ory learn­ing. Use social media with an open mind to learn from oth­er people’s exper­i­ences and insights. 
  • Demonstrate cre­ativ­ity and use­ful­ness. Use social media to express your­self cre­at­ively and strive to add value to others.

Learn more: The Selfie Generation: An Epidemic of Online Narcissism

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Emotional Maturity and Social Media

Selfie Generation - Jorvil R
The Selfie Generation. (Illustration: Jorvil R.)
Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Emotional Maturity and Social Media

How do we bet­ter under­stand the emo­tion­al matur­ity of the Selfie Generation? In The Secret of Maturity by Kevin Everett FitzMaurice, a matur­ity pro­gres­sion of six steps is outlined:

Level 1: Emotional Responsibility

Social media imma­tur­ity: When people get eas­ily offen­ded, espe­cially on behalf of others.

Level 1 matur­ity means that you under­stand that your feel­ings are your choices. People who haven’t yet reached this level of matur­ity tend to blame their feel­ings on extern­al stim­uli, such as oth­er people, places, things, forces, fate, and spirits. 

Level 2: Emotional Honesty

Social media imma­tur­ity: When people pub­licly paint them­selves as vic­tims of their feelings.

Level 2 matur­ity means you under­stand your feel­ings and have the cop­ing mech­an­isms to allow for genu­ine emo­tions instead of sup­press­ing them. People who haven’t yet reached this level of matur­ity tend to hurt them­selves emo­tion­ally because they haven’t yet learned how to cope with their inner emotions. 

Level 3: Emotional Openness

Social media imma­tur­ity: When people pub­licly over­share to wal­low or are unaware that their shar­ing has the oppos­ite effect than they were aim­ing for.

Level 3 matur­ity means that you can be pur­pose­ful in vent­ing your emo­tions with the intent to let them go because you’re done with them. People who haven’t yet reached this level of matur­ity tend to be insec­ure in know­ing how and when to share their feelings. 

Level 4: Emotional Assertiveness

Social media imma­tur­ity: When people allow oth­ers to make them feel bad but can­not set whatever bound­ar­ies they need.

Level 4 matur­ity means that you take respons­ib­il­ity for clearly com­mu­nic­at­ing your emo­tion­al needs with those who care about you. People who haven’t yet reached this matur­ity level tend to fear ask­ing oth­ers to respect their emo­tion­al needs. 

Level 5: Emotional Understanding

Social media imma­tur­ity: When people try too hard to vir­tue sig­nal and pro­ject a false self-image, which only makes them feel worse.

Level 5 matur­ity means you no longer force your­self into ima­gin­ary or con­veni­ent ideas about who you are and what you should feel. People who haven’t yet reached this level of matur­ity tend to have cer­tain firm beliefs about them­selves that stem from ideas or prin­ciples, not genu­ine emotions. 

Level 6: Emotional Detachment

Social media imma­tur­ity: When people can’t truly appre­ci­ate liv­ing in a world where people make each oth­er feel good and bad about things.

Level 6 matur­ity means you are detached from your ego, and noth­ing can no longer both­er you bey­ond your con­trol. People who haven’t yet reached this level of matur­ity tend to have cer­tain self-con­cepts to defend or promote. 

Learn more: The Selfie Generation: An Epidemic of Online Narcissism

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Life Experience and Maturity

Shaping tech­no­logy to favour human­ity will require a size­able dose of matur­ity, char­ac­ter, and life experience. 

John Mellkvist, a Swedish PR con­sult­ant and futur­ist, is on a per­son­al quest to raise aware­ness that the “older” work­force is con­stantly undervalued.

John Mellkvist - Selfie Generation
John Mellkvist, a Swedish PR con­sult­ant, is fight­ing against ageism.

For instance, Mellkvist is push­ing loc­al industry media to list “50 over 50” as a coun­ter­weight to all juni­or mar­ket­ing and PR list­ings. I sup­port his work whole­heartedly, of course, but I can’t help but react against the absurdity of under­es­tim­at­ing pro­fes­sion­als with extens­ive exper­i­ence and robust networks.

Why shouldn’t we be con­fid­ent in shap­ing social media to reflect our gen­er­a­tion better? 

Read also: What Remains of the Xennial Generation?

Let Me Take a Selfie

I think of my beha­viour on social media as I pon­der the vary­ing levels of emo­tion­al matur­ity among my peers in the selfie gen­er­a­tion. Getting sucked into a mael­strom of click­bait and humbl­eb­rags is taxing. 

It’s a pecu­li­ar side-effect: online self-pub­lish­ing with zero fric­tion has made it easy to resort to imma­ture and react­ive behaviours. 

Imagine if we, at least those who think of ourselves as adults and wish to opt out of the Selfie Generation, could shift our approach to social media. How wonderful!

Good stuff.
But first, let me take a selfie.

Signature - Jerry Silfwer - Doctor Spin

Thanks for read­ing. Please sup­port my blog by shar­ing art­icles with oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als. You might also con­sider my PR ser­vices or speak­ing engage­ments.

ANNOTATIONS
ANNOTATIONS
1 Silfwer, J. (2021, August 10). Online Wannabeism: Why We Mimic Social Media Influencers. Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​o​n​l​i​n​e​-​w​a​n​n​a​b​e​i​sm/
2 Bernardini, J. (2014, June 30). The Infantilization of the Postmodern Adult and the Figure of Kidult. ResearchGate. https://​www​.researchg​ate​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​2​9​1​2​2​2​5​9​5​_​T​h​e​_​I​n​f​a​n​t​i​l​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​_​o​f​_​t​h​e​_​P​o​s​t​m​o​d​e​r​n​_​A​d​u​l​t​_​a​n​d​_​t​h​e​_​F​i​g​u​r​e​_​o​f​_​K​i​d​ult
3 Silfwer, J. (2022, September 6). Social Media — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​o​c​i​a​l​-​m​e​d​ia/
4 Silfwer, J. (2023, December 15). Echo Chambers: Algorithmic Confirmation Bias. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​e​c​h​o​-​c​h​a​m​b​e​rs/
5 Silfwer, J. (2020, June 4). The Spiral of Silence. Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​p​i​r​a​l​-​o​f​-​s​i​l​e​n​ce/
6 Silfwer, J. (2023, November 22). The Anatomy of Attention. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​a​t​t​e​n​t​i​on/
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at Spin Factory and KIX Communication Index. Before that, he worked at Kaufmann, Whispr Group, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.
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