The history of portraits was once reserved for the aristocracy, a rigid record of lineage and power. Today, that privilege has been democratized into a pocket-sized mirror. The selfie is no longer just a photograph; it is a complex ritual of self-construction that navigates the turbulent waters of modern identity. While critics often dismiss the proliferation of self-images as mere narcissism, this view misses the profound political and psychological stakes involved. For many, particularly women navigating increasingly patriarchal landscapes, the camera is not a vanity mirror but a tool of agency, a space where identity is negotiated, contested, and reclaimed.
For decades, the female gaze was dictated by the male viewer. Women were objects to be looked at, their worth measured by their adherence to narrow beauty standards. The rise of the selfie represents a significant shift in this dynamic. It’s a reappropriation of the visual field. By controlling the angle, the lighting, and the frame, women are exercising a form of visual sovereignty. This is evident when the act of posting an unedited image becomes a quiet rebellion against the homogenizing pressure of commercial media. It is a declaration that the body belongs to the person inhabiting it, not to the industry profiting from its inadequacy. In this sense, the selfie functions as a mechanism of legitimation, allowing individuals to assert their existence on their own terms rather than through the approval of traditional gatekeepers.
However, this empowerment is entangled with the mechanics of social validation. The “like” has become a quantified metric of social belonging, creating a feedback loop that can distort self-perception. Research suggests that while receiving positive feedback can temporarily boost self-esteem, the reliance on external validation for internal worth is precarious. The danger lies in the commodification of the self, where one’s value is tied to algorithmic approval. This creates a paradox: the very tool used for emancipation can become a chain, binding the individual to the expectations of a digital audience that rarely sees the full human behind the screen.
Furthermore, the constant exposure to curated lives fosters a culture of emulation and social comparison. Seeing others’ highlight reels can trigger feelings of inadequacy, leading to what psychologists term “upward social comparison.” Studies indicate that frequent viewing of others’ selfies is negatively associated with life satisfaction and self-esteem, particularly among those who feel they lack popularity. Yet, there is also a contagious aspect to these images. Empathy remains potent even through pixels; witnessing vulnerability or joy in another’s self-portrait can foster a sense of shared humanity, bridging gaps that physical distance widens. The image acts as a vessel for emotional resonance, reminding us that we are all navigating similar struggles of visibility and acceptance.
The psychological toll of this environment is not negligible. There is evidence linking excessive selfie behavior with increased social anxiety and body surveillance, especially among adolescents . When the boundary between private self-reflection and public performance blurs, the mind can become exhausted by the effort of maintaining a consistent persona. The risk of conformity is high; when everyone filters their reality to fit a specific aesthetic, diversity of expression suffers, and mental health takes a hit as individuals struggle to reconcile their authentic selves with their digital avatars.
Ultimately, the selfie is a double-edged sword. It offers a powerful means of self-expression and resistance against oppressive norms, yet it risks trapping us in a cycle of validation-seeking and comparative despair. To go through this landscape, we must cultivate a critical relationship with our own images. We should ask ourselves not just how we look, but why we choose to share, and whether that sharing serves our authenticity or merely feeds our insecurity. In reclaiming the narrative of our own faces, we hold the key to using this technology not as a master, but as a servant to our well-being.
Are you a fan of selfie? Let me know in the comment box!
Thank you for reading. Please, visit my blog to read more from me. And don’t forget to sign up for Wise&Shine!
I drafted this post with the help of a large language model (LLM), that summarized for me the scientific articles. I closely edited it for clarity and accuracy.
Modern culture, especially in
capitalist societies, often emphasises
self-expression through possessions,
lifestyle, and personal branding.
Motivational quotes like “Be
yourself,” “follow your passion,” and
“treat yourself” are positive in one
sense, but they also reinforce a culture where the self is the central project.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
TikTok, or X, reward visibility,
attention, and personal branding. The
“ego” becomes a digital product, one
which is carefully curated, compared,
and measured in likes, followers, and
shares. The line between authentic
selfhood and ego-performance gets
blurred.
While modern culture prizes
individualism, this often undermines
collective values like solidarity, duty,
or tradition. Many cultural critics
argue that this “egoistic age” leaves
people disconnected, anxious, and
lonely, despite being more
“connected” online than ever.
Modern culture can be read as the
triumph of egoism. Where traditional
societies emphasised duty, tradition,
or collective belonging, modern life
elevates the individual self as the
ultimate value. Consumerism
encourages us to express identity
through what we own, while social
media rewards the performance of
selfhood through visibility and
recognition. In this sense, the “ego” is
both our project and our product.
Yet this cultural egoism is double-
edged: while it gives people freedom
to define themselves, it also risks
leaving us fragmented, competitive,
and isolated. The modern self is
celebrated, but also constantly
measured, compared, and
commodified. What looks like
empowerment can just as easily be
entrapment, the prison of always
having to be someone.
Research suggests the ego is more
important in the desire of being
popular with others, over the general
focus of life and living life.
Materialism may refer to the tendency
to prioritise the pursuit of money and
material possessions over other life
goals and to view them as essential to
happiness and success.
A large body
of research has demonstrated a
negative link between materialism
and well-being, such that individuals
high (vs low) on materialism show
poorer interpersonal relationships,
reduced life satisfaction, diminished
levels of happiness, and higher levels
of depression. Moreover, materialism
also reduces social sensitivity, and
thus hinders prosocial behavior and
promotes selfish and immoral actions.
In the current research, we go beyond
the moral-immoral continuum and
adopt a framework of moral flexibility
to show that materialism may be
related to a more “flexible” attitude
towards morality.
Specifically, to the extent that
individuals hold materialistic values,
their attitudes towards moral rules
may depend more on whether
adopting or abandoning these rules
benefits themselves, demonstrating a
feature of “moral chameleons”. This
research would provide a more
nuanced picture of how materialism
relates to individuals’ moral attitudes
and behavior.
Moral rules, compared to other social
rules, are more rigid by nature.
Nevertheless, it is still prevalent that
people vary their moral judgments
and decision making across situations.
The term moral flexibility was used
by Bartels and colleagues to describe
a wide range of phenomena that moral
beliefs guiding people’s attitudes and
behavior may depend largely on
context, even when people really
intend to be moral. For instance, “not
to harm” can mean different things to
the same individual in different
situations. They emphasised that
moral flexibility does not mean
hypocrisy or weakness; it is
something unavoidable even when
people genuinely want to get it right.
Here we focus on one special kind of
moral flexibility as defined by Bartels
and colleagues, “self-interest-
triggered moral flexibility”. We use
this term to portray people’s tendency
to change moral judgments and
decisions depending on whether a
certain moral value or rule serves or
interferes with their self-interest.
Self-
interest-triggered moral flexibility
may exist in many forms. For
instance, individuals may judge their
own moral transgressions more
acceptable than the same behavior
enacted by others, and judge others’
immoral behavior more leniently if
they themselves can gain from the
behavior. When two moral principles
are pitted against each other,
individuals may prefer the one more
in line with their self-interest.
Moreover, individuals even show
preferences for immoral over moral
traits when immoral traits served their
current goals. In sum, individuals may
show a rather flexible attitude towards
moral rules depending on whether
their self-interest is at stake.
We believe that self-interest-triggered
moral flexibility does not necessarily
mean moral hypocrisy or immorality.
Moral hypocrisy, to appear moral but
meanwhile to avoid the cost of being
moral, is closely intertwined with
self-interest-triggered moral
flexibility, because both involve
“double standards” (i.e., to be strict
with others and lenient towards
oneself on moral issues) and “moral
inconsistency” (i.e., not to practice
what one preaches). Yet, unlike moral
hypocrisy, self-interest-triggered
moral flexibility does not presume
that people exhibiting such behavior
because they intend to conceal the
self-serving motives behind. Instead,
the essential focus of self-interest-
triggered moral flexibility concerns
the furtherance of self-interest.
Therefore, people with a high level of
self-interest-triggered moral
flexibility may care little about moral
self-image when it cannot benefit
them. They may not necessarily hide
their self-serving motives, and may
honestly believe in but refuse to live
up to what they claim. Self-interest-
triggered moral flexibility is not
equivalent to immorality either,
though it can sometimes manifest in
the form of immorality. As we
mentioned above, self-interest-
triggered moral flexibility may lead
one to adopt the moral rule that serves
their self-interest when multiple moral
rules are mutually competing. In such
circumstances, there is no objective
standard to determine whether the act
is moral or not.
Self-interest-triggered moral
flexibility also distinguishes from
moral disengagement. Through moral
disengagement mechanisms,
individuals can deactivate moral self-
regulatory processes such as guilt and
self-censure to allow themselves to
engage in unethical behavior and to
see such behavior as morally right.
In some forms of moral
disengagement mechanisms,
individuals flexibly shift their
perceptions and attitudes about their
immoral behavior to gain from the
behavior with a clean conscience. For
example, people may say “I just
borrow it” to allow themselves to
perceive taking someone else’s
bicycle without permission as morally
acceptable. Unlike moral
disengagement, however, self-
interest-triggered moral flexibility is
neither typically triggered by the
motivation to escape from the
reproach of conscience, nor is it
necessarily associated with an
immoral end.
The image of materialists is negative
as portrayed in many classical literary
and philosophical works.
For instance, money worship is
sneered at in Shakespeare’s Timon of
Athens, where Timon, having seen
through his friends who came and
went following the footsteps of
money, ended his life in loneliness
and despair. In ancient China,
Confucius noted the incompatibility
between integrity and interest, and
posited that “the superior man
understands what is right; the inferior
man understands what will sell”.
Corroborating this view, modern
empirical research in the fields of
psychology and management
repeatedly indicated a negative
association between materialism and
morality. Individuals high on
materialism are found to have lower
ethical standards, and are more likely
than others to profit from illegal or
morally problematic deeds. Moreover,
even mere exposure to money may
lead to heightened unethical behavior.
Previous understandings of this
corrupting aspect of materialism often
lie in the self-centeredness and
selfishness engendered by
materialism. An extraordinary focus
on material acquisition renders
materialistic people more self-
centered and less concerned with
others, which may set a stage for the
development of unethical behavior.
Similarly, some researchers identify a
conflict between materialistic values
and self-transcendent value. They
state that the high priority placed on
wealth, image, and status associated
with being materialistic interferes
with the concern for others’ welfare,
which may fuel unethical behavior.
However, we think self-interest-
triggered moral flexibility may be
more accurate than immorality in
capturing the influence of self-
centeredness on moral judgment and
behavior. In the view of a moral-
immoral continuum, self-centeredness
may undermine morality. However, if
we consider the fact that moral
judgments and decisions are often
made according to numerous
divergent moral values, self-
centeredness may not necessarily lead
to immorality.
For example, when two
moral principles—equity (i.e., payoff
in proportion to workload) and
equality (i.e., the same payoff for each
person) were pitted against each other,
participants with higher workload
preferred equity to equality more than
those with lower workload. In such
circumstances, there is no objective
standard to determine which
preference is more moral. We believe
that materialistic people’s self-
centeredness may manifest more in
such moral flexibility rather than
simply in being immoral, given that
moral principles often conflict with
each other and that most people are
inherently motivated to be moral.
Noteworthy is that we are not
contending immorality should be fully
replaced with self-interest-triggered
moral flexibility in depicting
materialistic people’s moral features;
yet, we believe that it is wise to avoid
oversimplifying the relationship
between materialism and morality.
In addition to self-centeredness, we
contend that people high on
materialism may also be prone to self-
interest-triggered moral flexibility
because they lack a coherent moral
value system. Bartels and colleagues
pointed out that one root of moral
flexibility lies in the complexity of the
moral world. They argued that when
facing complex moral beliefs, most
people are not philosophers who are
more capable and motivated to
achieve logical consistency across the
moral values. Thus, most people do
not own a coherent moral belief
system to respond consistently across situations.
We believe that materialistic people may be even less successful in synthesizing complex moral values. Materialists tend to
have a lower need for cognition and a
lower construal level, and they are
less likely than others to engage in
self-reflection, all of which may
hinder abstract thinking and thus the
integration of moral values.
Lack of a coherent moral value system,
materialistic individuals may
experience more vacillation between
competing moral values, exhibit
greater variations in moral judgments
and decisions, and be more likely to
rely on self-interest as a basis for
moral judgment. In sum, materialism
may be positively associated with
self-interest-triggered moral
flexibility for not only motivational
(i.e., heightened self-centeredness)
but also cognitive (i.e., lack of a
coherent moral value system) reason.
This comment is a post itself. I appreciate your engagement with publishing it as a ‘simple’ comment. Thank you!
Yeah I got a bit carried away with my point. Sorry 😔
You don’t have to be sorry! I am glad I triggered such a reflection with my post.
Ive have written a lot about how awareness is a powerful tool to guide your attention towards a specific topic or subject. It’s the new currency if you will. Likes, comments, shares and views etc are the way to thrive in the modern world. Give something attention and it grows, but ignore something and it will wilt. If you apply your attention towards something then you will become increasingly more aware of it and this awareness, multiplied by the many other people who are doing the same, is the process that is making an Instagram post more prevalent than a lesson in a classroom.
It’s a chapter from a book Ive wrote which fit the narrative perfectly
A powerful post Cristiana. I hate taking selfie myself but can see how and why they’re so popular. I do agree your concerns too though, so much pressure from social media to live up to everyone’s standards.
…and you cannot be sure that what is posted corresponds to the person’s reality. Thank you Brenda for commenting!