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CONSIDER THIS: Instagram has 100 million active users. And the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service has, at last count, 109 million photos tagged, simply, “#me.”
By the numbers, if you’re on Instagram and you haven’t taken a picture of yourself, you’re doing it wrong. Yet the digital self-portrait—the selfie—is somehow seen as a scourge, a threat to our well-being, a trend that must end.
We talked to psychologist Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, who dismissed these critiques as weak pop science.
“Most of these people who toss around these psychological terms like ‘narcissism’ or ‘addiction’ don’t understand that those are serious diagnostic criteria,” Rutledge says.
“We’ve gotten so we just chuck these things around, and it scares people. People are basically scared of technology because it’s new, and we’re pathologising it.”
While the mass adoption of smartphones and social networks is new, the urge to record one’s own image is as old as humanity, she says, pointing to cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Along with photography came the self-portrait. But where we had to sit still and grim-faced for 19th-century cameras, Rutledge points out, we now can take photos anywhere, at a moment’s notice.
“In this environment, the only way to get to know people is to disclose something of yourself,” Rutledge says.
And there’s nothing more self-revelatory than a photo:
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And while they were busy slapping each other on the back ,this is what happened .The sooner the better Zappone and her do gooders clique remember these youths are criminals and will inhabit our prisons in the future , then we might have a better chance of tackling crime.
@Just Me: the on demand generation need to start understanding what personal responsibility means. Then again not many so in the country
How many well off, especially the private educated FG supporters have a future in prison? FG have no problem spending fortune keeping people on jail but won’t spend a tiny fraction of that to house the poor leading to homeless future and despair leading to crimes that we all suffer from with a huge hyped up crime fear driven by the media business selling papers and fear especially that owned by a certain FG loving billionaire who’s tribunal findings against him have not been acted on since Enda became Taoiseach in 2011
@abcyz: 300,000 per “child” per annum
Can’t believe the Journal has not covered the ST John of God Audit as covered in today’s Irish Mail on Sunday. € 6 million and the CEO got over €2 million. Be true to your values. It is NEWS and much bigger than Console last year
@PVD: ah they only like headlines of that nature when it involves the guards
@PVD: I know, I work for this organisation and it infuriates me. The children and ordinary staff members have suffered so much from the cutbacks meanwhile the fat cats get fatter
They need to be treated like the criminals they are .. regardless of their age .
Didn’t the Journal publish an article earlier in the week saying everything was fine in Oberstown.
Since then there has been at least two articles saying different.
@MyBrokenKnees: obviously fake news.
No incidents in 7 months……this should read …no incidents that got media coverage. …
More diatribe…..
It’s suddenly a “Challenging Environment” now that he has been assaulted.But when ordinary staff were being assaulted everything was hunky dory.
Get the prison officers in there . Enough love dovey don’t work with these criminals that’s what they are. Will be in mount joy in a few years mark my words. Also make parents responsible for the children actions.
Katherine Zappone and Frances Fitzgerald maybe even Leo should work 2 or 3 days in a remand centre and then decide what needs to be done
You might come back into planet reality now . Criminals not children
have your say